


K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid)

by unniebee



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, Drama, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-04-08 03:55:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unniebee/pseuds/unniebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sehun's the new guy in IT, and constantly having to fix the myriad tech issues of one Park Chanyeol. Kind of annoying, but mostly fine, until Sehun actually <i>meets</i> Chanyeol - because he isn't <i>at all</i> what Sehun was expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY BESTEST INTERNET FRIEND [BECCA!](http://allhandson-deck.livejournal.com/) I loooove you <3
> 
> Also a special thanks to my beta [Jinx](http://wild_jinx.livejournal.com/), without whom this story would have floundered terribly.

Sehun had never had a cubicle before.

He’d had desks, and at his internship he’d shared an open cube with two other techs, but now he had a _real job_ and with that real job came his _own_ desk in his _own_ cubicle, three and a half walls that carved out a little space in this big company that was just for him. He had this stupid urge to cover the grey fabric walls in posters and photos and cute colorful thumbtacks. He hadn’t even known cute colorful thumbtacks were a _thing_ until he passed one of his new co-worker’s cubicles and saw the walls adorned in brightly colored smiley faces and flowers and birds and such, but now he wanted some.

He wasn’t sure how long he had to wait before slathering his walls in color, but chances were good it wasn’t a very appropriate thing to do on your first day, so Sehun settled into his new chair and booted up his new computer and checked his new email, fully expecting his inbox to be empty, seeing as he’d walked into the building just about two hours ago and had done nothing but fill out paperwork and get a basic tour so far. But to his surprise there was one email in there, a forward from the help-desk ticketing system, with a note from one of the senior members of the help desk team that said _this one’s all yours, new guy_.

Was this a test? If they were just going to throw him into the job without introduction, Sehun was okay with that, even if the idea made him a little bit nervous. He didn’t really know much about the systems yet - what if he couldn’t solve the user’s problem?

But the moment he opened the ticket and read it, he relaxed. Just reading the user’s description of the problem, he was pretty sure he knew exactly what to do. He’d dealt with dozens of complaints just like this over the course of his internship.

Sehun dialed into the remote access system and took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls before locating the user’s PC in the list and picking up the phone.

_“Product Sales, this is Park Chanyeol,”_ the voice on the other end greeted cheerfully.

Sehun blinked. It was one of the deepest voices he’d ever heard, rumbling like a boulder down a hill over the line. “Mr. Park, this is Oh Sehun from the help desk. I’ve got your ticket here - it says you’re having a printer issue?”

_“Who? Oh, you must be the new guy! Call me Chanyeol. Yeah, hey, thanks, I have no idea what’s wrong with it. I keep pressing print and it says it’s printing but nothing comes out! Maybe there’s gnomes.”_

He sounded very serious about that theory, and Sehun had to bite back a smile. “Well, if you don’t mind, Chanyeol, I’ll dial in to your PC and see what the issue is.” He started doing just that, setting the login in motion. “In the meantime, do me a favor and check that your printer cables are connected properly.”

_“Oh! Right. I knew that. Sure, hang on.”_ The phone clattered to the desk, and shuffling noises came from the other end. Sehun knew chances were good the printer cables were not the issue - the error message would have been different if that was the case - but it gave the user something to do. 

Once he was into Chanyeol’s computer, Sehun started poking around in the printer queue, in the spooler. Everything seemed in order, which was odd. No documents stuck in the queue, no errors...He stared at it for a moment, wondering what he was missing.

That deep voice came back on the line. _“Everything’s connected,”_ Chanyeol reported, sounding a little breathless. _“I even went under the desk to check that the surge protector was turned on.”_

Under the desk? Wait. “Just to confirm,” Sehun said, “tell me the make and model of the printer you’re trying to print to?”

_“It’s an...um...oh! Here. HP Deskjet 3000.”_

Aha. “Well there’s your problem,” Sehun said, trying not to smile. “Your default printer got changed to a Toshiba machine. I’m sorry, I’m not too familiar with the building yet. Is there a big floor-standing copier/printer on your floor?”

_“Yeah! It’s over on the other side of the room.”_

“Well, I’d bet that’s where your documents are.” Sehun made a quick change. “I’ve reset your default to your desk printer. You shouldn’t have any issues now.” And just to be on the safe side, he removed the button for ‘Devices and Printers’ from the start menu, suspecting that some accidental clicking had gotten the user in this situation in the first place. 

_“Wow, thanks! That was fast!”_

Yeah, that was because the issue was mostly the user, not the computer itself. “Glad I could be of service,” Sehun said. “Have a nice day.”

_“You too!”_ The line went dead and Sehun set his phone back down, grinning to himself as he entered the outcome of the call into the ticket and closed it. Not bad, for his first five minutes on the job.

Twenty seconds later, the sound of a rolling chair on carpet approached, and Sehun turned just in time to see a young man maybe two or three years his senior roll up in a low-back task chair. It was Zitao, the co-worker who had forwarded him the ticket, whom Sehun had met for the first time during his tour this morning. “Hey, not bad, new guy,” Zitao said, sounding impressed. “I think that’s the fastest we’ve gotten him through the system in weeks.” 

“Tao, you didn’t give him Chanyeol, did you?” a new voice asked, and Sehun looked up to see the top half of a head peering over his cubicle wall, dark skin and dark hair and sleepy-looking eyes. “You’re gonna scare him off!”

Sehun cocked his head, trying to process that and remember the other helpdesk tech’s name at the same time. Jongin, that was it. “Why?” he asked. “He wasn’t mean or angry or anything.”

“Oh yeah, no, don’t get me wrong,” Jongin said, draping his arms over the cubicle wall comfortably. “Chanyeol’s cool, he’s like this bouncy ray of sunshine. He’s just _terrible_ at technology. You know how some people have the uncanny ability to break tech just by looking at it? He’s one of those.”

Oh. Yeah, Sehun’s mother was one of those, too. “Well, he didn’t seem too bad on the phone,” he said hesitantly. “The problem was a pretty easy fix.”

“Hey,” Tao said with a shrug, “if you like it, you can take his tickets from now on. Frees us up for the stuff we _actually_ have to get done.” He jerked his thumb at Jongin to indicate who us was. “Chanyeol’s tickets always end up interrupting us in the middle of projects, it’s uncanny.”

Sehun shrugged. “That’s okay,” he said, drawing surprised looks from his new co-workers. “If you want to send his tickets to me, that’s fine, I’ll take them.” Strictly troubleshooting work wasn’t totally _ideal_ , but it was his first job out of university and everyone had to start somewhere.

“Dude,” Jongin said, “you’re officially my new favorite person.” He disappeared back into his own cube, and Zitao gave Sehun a look.

“You’re gonna regret saying that,” he said, but he was smiling, so Sehun hoped he was at least mostly joking. “Give it a week, you’ll see.” He spun his chair around and rolled away.

 

##################################################

 

True to his word, by the end of the week, Sehun understood what Jongin and Tao were talking about.

Chanyeol in Sales had the uncanny ability to find every _possible_ way to make his computer stop working. In four days, Sehun got nine tickets from Chanyeol, each one more headdesk-inducing than the last.

To be fair, some of the tickets were for things that were totally outside of Chanyeol’s control, like an automatically installed update that didn’t install correctly, or when another employee had pulled out a network cable and knocked out network connectivity to the entire floor and Chanyeol just happened to be the first person to say something. Of course, there were also the tickets that made absolutely _no_ sense and Sehun couldn’t figure out how the issues had even _happened_ , and at least one that Sehun never actually figured out what the issue even _was_ , but with some poking around did manage to get it to stop happening.

He found, though, that it wasn’t nearly as exasperating as Tao and Jongin had made it sound. Sure, Chanyeol had an almost _supernatural_ knack for getting into technological trouble, but every time Sehun called him up he was greeted with enthusiasm, treated with respect and thanked profusely. Chanyeol was a nice man, with a rather silly sense of humor, and Sehun found he didn’t mind helping him out.

Friday morning, Sehun was meeting with the help desk supervisor, as he was scheduled to do every week until he was out of his training period. And Minseok was usually busy, so Sehun was glad to have the chance to talk to him, if for no other reason than to make sure he hadn’t accidentally screwed something up already.

Of course, the moment he sat down, Minseok pushed a couple of pages of printouts across the desk.

“Know what that is?” he asked. 

Sehun looked. “My activity log?” he guessed.

 

“Mmm-hmm.” His manager shot him a very skeptical eyebrow. “Want to tell me why every single one of Park Chanyeol’s tickets ended up in your queue?” 

“Um.” Crap, was he not supposed to take them all? Was there some rule he wasn’t aware of about one tech not taking the same person each time? “I told Tao and Jongin I didn’t mind working with him,” Sehun said, figuring being truthful was best. “I guess they decided to take advantage of that. Is that okay?”

“Well, that depends.” Minseok glanced back down at the paper. “You manage to get his myriad issues solved in record time, so as long as you still have time for project work, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

Sehun’s heart leapt. “Project work?” he asked. 

His hopeful tone earned him a smile. “The Finance department needs new PCs,” he explained. “The system admin guys are in the process of upgrading their software and the new applications aren’t compatible with the shitty machines they’re currently using. I thought I’d let you request and install the hardware.” He raised an eyebrow. “There’s a lot of red tape to get through. You’ll have to write a memo.”

“I can do that,” Sehun said, trying not to sound too eager. Even if he had to stay a little later to take care of the never-ending problems of Chanyeol in Sales and still get his own work done, he would. That after just one week, Minseok was trusting him with a project, and an _important_ one even if it was fairly simple, boded well for his success here. 

“Good,” Minseok said briskly. “One less thing on my plate.” He waved his hand. “You’re doing great so far, Sehun. Now get out, I have three more meetings this morning.”

Sehun went, and tried not to skip all the way back to his desk.

 

##################################################

 

“Park, are you sitting anywhere near your computer right now?” Sehun asked through grit teeth. 

_“Um...yes?”_

“Do me a favor and go someplace else, okay?”

Chanyeol’s deep voice was petulant. _“Damnit, did it go wrong? I thought you said this was going to be quick.”_

Breathing out a long-suffering sigh, Sehun said, “On everyone else’s PC, it _was_ quick. Figures _you_ would be the one to have issues.” Chanyeol made an apologetic noise, and Sehun rubbed at the headache forming between his eyes. “Look, just, take a walk or something, would you? I’m pretty sure your very _presence_ is disruptive to technology.”

Sehun wasn’t actually kidding, not really, but Chanyeol laughed, bass and booming and loud enough that Sehun pulled the phone away from his ear. _“Alright, I’ve got some calls to make anyway. I’ll go commandeer a conference room. Good luck, man.”_

He hung up, and Sehun popped one earbud into his ear and started his music, because he was going to be there a while. It was a simple software installation that had gone off without a hitch on the rest of the PCs in Sales, but of course on Chanyeol’s PC the installation had frozen midway. Now Sehun had to dig manually through the registry and delete all traces of the corrupted installation so that he could re-install. 

It took hours, but Sehun managed to get it done, working through lunch and with his other tickets and the projects he was supposed to get done piling up in his inbox. He finally logged off of Chanyeol’s computer just before 3PM, and sent him a quick email to tell him it was done and _please_ don’t touch it before diving into his other work. It ended up being a late night, with Sehun finally stumbling out of the office sometime around eight PM, after twelve hours of work.

“I was about to call the police out,” his roommate said as he shut the door to their apartment behind him and slumped tiredly against it. Luhan stuck his head around the doorway from the kitchen, eyed Sehun’s form, and then disappeared again, calling, “Hard day?”

“Just had a four-hour detour in the middle that set my schedule back,” Sehun grumbled. “Got it all done, though.” He toed off his shoes and followed his nose to the kitchen, where Luhan was busy making fried rice. “Mmm, that smells amazing.”

“Sit your ass down and don’t crowd me,” his hyung scolded, shoving Sehun lightly towards a chair. Sehun collapsed, dropping his head onto his folded arms on the table. “Let me guess, it was that guy in Sales.”

Tilting his head so he could look up at Luhan over his elbow, Sehun grinned ruefully. “However did you know?” he asked, cheeky.

Luhan shook his head. “I told you, it was a mistake offering to take on all his problems. You’ve only been there a month and you’re already burning yourself out.”

“I’ll be fine, hyung,” Sehun murmured. “Today wasn’t really his fault; I think his hard drive is damaged. There’s no other reason the installation should have frozen, unless it was trying to write to a corrupted sector.”

He got a grain of rice flung at him. “Stop with the tech-speak, you nerd,” Luhan said, grinning. “I don’t know what that means, all I know is that you come home every night complaining about this guy. _Chanyeol’s PC did something weird today. Chanyeol called me for something dumb again today. Oh my god that man destroys every piece of tech he touches.”_

Sehun blinked. He hadn’t realized he was being _that_ obnoxious about it. “Well, in my defense,” he said, “Chanyeol does take up like...thirty percent of my work day.” He smiled ruefully. “I should tell HR to add him to my job description.”

Luhan snorted, turned off the heat, and started talking about his own day while spooning rice into bowls, and that was the end of that conversation. 

Sehun didn’t even think about the incident again until the next day, when a courier came down to the IT department, was pointed at Sehun’s desk, and rather unceremoniously dropped a sizable potted plant on it.

Sehun blinked. “Uh, what’s this?” he asked.

“Delivery,” the courier drawled, unceremoniously. “Sign here, please.”

Sehun did, eyeing the plant. The moment the courier left, Tao and Jongin appeared, Tao in his rolling chair and Jongin over the cubicle wall as per usual.

“Ooh, who’s sending you presents?” Jongin asked curiously. Sehun shrugged and turned the pot, inspecting it. It was a weird-looking plant, gnarled branches and thick, plasticy-feeling red-tinged leaves, like a little alien tree. There was a little card with a note scrawled inside in messy, close to illegible hand, on a pick stuck into the soil in the pot.

_I heard it’s dark down there, so here’s something to brighten your desk! Thanks for your hard work yesterday~ PCY_

A smile broke out on Sehun’s face, mostly without his input. “That’s nice of him,” he murmured, admiring the plant. It was definitely a strange-looking thing, but Sehun decided he liked it; it was unusual and the burst of green and red did look nice against his still mostly-bare gray walls. The tag said it was a jade plant, and could survive without direct sunlight.

“Nice of who?” Tao reached past Sehun and plucked the card off of the card holder. He scanned it quickly and blinked in surprise. “Chanyeol sent you this?”

“I did spend four hours fixing his PC yesterday,” Sehun pointed out.

“Yeah, but, I mean, that’s par for the course for Chanyeol’s stuff. He never sent _me_ a plant.” Tao eyed Sehun up and down, eyebrows raised in a way that made Sehun want to blush, though he wasn’t really sure why. It was a nice gesture, but it wasn’t like a bouquet of roses or something; Chanyeol was just thanking Sehun for the extra work he put in. Sehun wasn’t sure what Tao was trying to imply with that face.

“Whatever,” Sehun said, shrugging off Tao’s eyebrow-waggling leer and Jongin’s curious eyes. He turned his back on his co-workers to signal he was done with this question and eyed his cubicle, before positioning the plant behind and slightly to the left of his monitor. 

There, that looked nice.

He waited until his co-workers lost interest and left before shooting off a quick thank-you email to Chanyeol. No sense in _inviting_ the teasing.

 

##################################################

 

This time, the ticket just said, _Help?_ Sehun sighed and picked up the phone.

_“Product Sales, this is Park Chanyeol,”_ a by-now familiar bass voice greeted.

“It’s like my name doesn’t even come up on your phone display when I call you,” Sehun teased.

_“Hey, man, it only took the President calling me from someone else’s phone_ one time _for me to learn,”_ Chanyeol shot back, his tone relaxing immediately. _“I am so glad you called. I think I really broke it this time.”_

He sounded like a kicked puppy. Sehun sighed. “Okay, what’s the issue?” he asked, already dialing into Chanyeol’s PC.

The remote access program came back with an error just as Chanyeol said, _“It won’t start.”_

Sehun blinked. “At all?” Wait. He cocked an eyebrow. “Is it, you know, plugged in?”

_“Okay, I’m not_ that _bad,”_ Chanyeol huffed, making Sehun smile. _“Yes, it’s plugged in. It gets through the first screen, you know, ‘press escape to enter the menu’ blah blah, but then it just...freezes. I’ve tried three times.”_

Shit. That sounded like the hard drive might have finally bit it. Sehun glanced at his inbox, where the signed requisition memo for a new PC for Chanyeol had just come back to him, after weeks of arguing back and forth with Minseok, who was reluctant to spend the money on someone notorious for breaking things. Sehun had argued that the particular PC he’d requested - more powerful, with a newer OS - would cut down on a lot of Chanyeol’s issues; over the course of his first few weeks he’d quickly realized that because Chanyeol had a reputation, all the oldest and shittiest equipment was pawned off on him, exacerbating the problem. Minseok had finally acquiesced just a few days before, and Sehun had been meaning to get going on that, but hadn’t yet found the time.

“Okay,” Sehun sighed. “I guess I’ll come up and see what I can do.” If the hard drive wasn’t _totally_ dead, he might be able to get it up and going well enough to tide Chanyeol over until Sehun could get his new PC delivered and set up, and if it _was_ , he’d have reason to ask Minseok to approve overnight shipping and the allotted time to get Chanyeol set up fast.

_“You’re my hero,”_ Chanyeol said. _“I’m on the fourth floor, in the northwest corner by the windows.”_

So Sehun gathered up his tools - which was basically his keychain multitool and a flash drive with a ton of diagnostic programs installed - and left the basement for the first time in six weeks, headed up five flights of stairs.

He saw the desk before he saw the man, coming up behind the high-backed chair. (And hey, how come the sales guys got better chairs than IT did?) True to Chanyeol’s word, the PC was stuck in the boot screen, running and running without getting anywhere like a hamster in a wheel. Sehun couldn’t help it, he sighed in exasperation, and at the sound of it the chair turned and the man in it hurriedly got to his feet, and for the first time Sehun laid eyes on the man he’d spoken with every day.

And Sehun hadn’t really realized, until that moment, that he’d sort of built an _image_ in his head of Chanyeol. He’d been imagining him kind of fat and jolly, maybe late 30’s or early 40’s, balding, with glasses and a cheerful smile that made his eyes crinkle and disappear. 

It looked like he’d gotten the smile and the glasses right, but that was all. Chanyeol was _smoking hot._

Tall, lanky, and fit. Broad-shouldered. Long-legged. Big hands, a long, pale neck, stylishly cut hair dyed a soft light brown. Big, round, soft brown eyes made bigger and rounder by the fashionably thick-framed glasses, and a toothy, handsome smile that got wider as his gaze dragged up Sehun’s form. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Sehun himself and Sehun’s entire worldview scrambled to rearrange.

“Hey, you must be Sehun,” Chanyeol said, and oh _shit_ his voice sounded even deeper in person, resonant and sexy as fuck. He reached out a hand, and on autopilot Sehun took it, and tried not to swoon as strong fingers wrapped warmly around his palm.

“Yep,” Sehun said intelligently. “Hi. Nice to, uh, meet you, finally.”

Chanyeol’s laugh was familiar, but the accompanying expression on his shockingly handsome face was new, and Sehun found himself automatically smiling in return, his hand lingering in Chanyeol’s instead of awkwardly pulling away like he usually did. 

“So _you’re_ the fabled techie,” a new voice said, and Sehun looked up to see a smaller young man in the next cubicle over, leaning back in his chair to look around the cube wall. “We were starting to think Yeol was making you up.” His eyes were much more appraising than Chanyeol’s were when he looked Sehun over. “Damn, you’re just a kid.”

Sehun’s cheeks flushed sharply, the polite smile dropping. “I’m 22,” he deadpanned.

Chanyeol burst out laughing, deep, floor-shaking guffaws that made the heat in Sehun’s cheeks reach critical mass. “Ah, don’t get offended,” he said, patting Sehun companionably on the shoulder. “Baekhyun’s foot is in his mouth most of the time.” His smile literally made Sehun’s knees weak. This was _bad_. “And since you came onboard, I’ve spent far more time actually _working_ than waiting on IT to fix my stuff, so I don’t care how young you are. You’re officially my favorite.” His hand fell away from Sehun’s shoulder, leaving him feeling chilly in the wake of Chanyeol’s warmth. “So whaddya think, tech hero? Can you save it?”

Right. The reason he was up here. “I’ll do my best,” Sehun said. “Do you mind if I…?” He gestured at the chair.

“Oh! Yeah, obviously. Be my guest.” Chanyeol made a sweeping, overdramatic gesture at the chair, like a royal courtier bowing to a prince, and Sehun tried not to smile like a moron as he took the chair. On top of being hot as hell, Chanyeol was _cute_ , and it was all Sehun could do to remain professional and not squeal like a fangirl at an idol concert.

He plugged in his flash drive, hard-reset the computer, and navigated into the boot menu. Warmth by his shoulder made him look up; Chanyeol was leaning right into his space, perusing the screen curiously. Startled, Sehun’s finger slipped, and he accidentally continued into startup without actually making the change to boot from his flash drive. He swore under his breath and reached for the power button to start over. 

“Crap, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” Chanyeol muttered. “I’ll just...go over here.” He reached further over Sehun’s head to grab something off his overhead shelving, giving Sehun a noseful of some pretty nice cologne and a rather spectacular view of his crisp white dress shirt stretching taut across his chest, and then he was gone, crossing the room in long strides to duck into an empty conference room. Sehun watched him go without turning the chair, admiring the insanely long lines of his fitted grey slacks and the hint of a small, tight ass under the bottom hem of his suit coat.

Yanking his eyes away, Sehun bit the inside of his lip hard and refocused on his job. Time enough to deal with that later.

 

##################################################

 

45 minutes of trying everything later, Sehun determined that it was, in fact, the hard drive, and Chanyeol’s PC was dead in the water. It was a good thing he’d fought for that requisition memo, because the paperwork for getting a new machine was already half done.

Having done all he could do, Sehun turned off the bricked machine and went to look for Chanyeol. He knocked on the door to the conference room and was waved inside.

Chanyeol was standing, leaning on the conference room table with palms spread widely apart, papers and notes spread around him and a pen tucked behind one round ear. Sehun realized he was on speakerphone with someone a moment before an unfamiliar voice filled the room.

_“Look, Park, I have a lot on my plate - ”_

“We all do, Kyuhyun. But this client’s already been through _three_ delays, I’m afraid if there’s another one we’ll lose them. Look, if you’re too swamped, is there someone else down there who might be able to pinch-hit?”

A long-suffering sigh. _“I’ll ask around and get back to you.”_

“Appreciate that.” He reached out to hang up the phone, and Sehun cocked his head and admired the long, unbroken curve of his body. To Sehun, he said, “Heaven forfend I ask Implementation to actually, you know, _do their jobs._ ” He grinned, showing he was kidding, and Sehun smiled helplessly back, unable to not respond to his cheer. “So what’s the story? Did you fix it?”

Sehun leaned on the doorframe, arms crossing over his chest unconsciously. “Good news and bad news,” he said, and Chanyeol made a face. “The bad news is, it’s dead. Hard drive’s shot. You’re gonna be without a computer until I can get you a new one.”

“Damnit,” Chanyeol groaned. “How did I manage that?”

Blinking at him, Sehun softened his tone and said, “It isn’t actually your fault, despite the jokes people make.” Chanyeol looked up at him, clearly surprised, and Sehun wondered how much of the teasing comments the man had internalized. “Your PC is one of the oldest in the company, and I figured out that your hard drive was failing in my first week. This was going to happen sooner or later no matter what you did.” He smiled. “Which brings me to the good news - I saw this coming, so I’ve already gotten approval to get you a new one. I’ll order it today and have it overnighted. Hopefully you’ll be back up and running by Thursday morning at the latest.”

Chanyeol’s jaw dropped. “You really _are_ my hero,” he breathed, and Sehun laughed, feeling his cheeks heat. “Oh, but my files? My projects?”

Sehun rolled his eyes. “Everything’s backed up, don’t worry,” he said. “That’s why we _have_ an internal network. It’ll all be there.”

Whistling impressedly, Chanyeol said, “Damn, that’s _awesome_. Can I hug you? Is that weird?”

With his heartbeat suddenly _very, very loud_ in his ears, Sehun kept his tone as cheerfully nonchalant as possible and said, “Sure.” And Chanyeol did just that, crossing the room in two strides and wrapping long arms around Sehun’s shoulders. Sehun pressed his face into Chanyeol’s suitcoat and kept his own arms safely around Chanyeol’s upper back, revelling for one brief, beautiful moment in Chanyeol’s warmth, his scent, his trim, firm body. 

It was over too quick, and Chanyeol patted Sehun’s shoulder companionably as he pulled away. “I guess I’ll be at my desk if you need me,” he said. “Keep me updated, yeah?”

It was a dismissal, and Sehun needed to get back down to his desk and place that order anyway. “I will,” he promised, and got another warm shoulder-pat and a wide, gorgeous smile before he left.

Sehun’s cell phone was out in his hand before he made it down the first flight of stairs. 

**To: Luhan  
We need to go shopping tonight.**

His answer came just as he plopped down at his desk and started digging for that purchase memo.

**Luhan  
Always up for spending money. Why, what’s up?**

**To: Luhan  
You know that sales guy I’m always bitching about? Met him today. Guess what, he’s hot.**

A pause. Sehun found the memo, looked it over one more time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and picked up the phone to call Minseok and explain he needed permission to order overnight shipping. When he’d finally gotten his way, Luhan’s answer was waiting for him.

**Luhan  
How hot are we talking?**

Sehun grinned, feeling warm at the memory of Chanyeol’s smile, his handshake, his arms.

**To: Luhan  
Throw-me-over-the-desk-and-fuck-me-till-I-scream hot.**

He placed the order, selected overnight shipping, and billed it to the company.

**Luhan  
Well damn. That’s a twist. So why are we shopping?**

**To: Luhan  
Because if there’s even the slightest chance I’m going to be seeing him around, I need better work clothes. I want him panting after my ass. Thrift-store slacks two sizes too big are not going to cut it.**

Right out of university, Sehun had not been able to afford good work clothes, and had gotten everything second-hand. But he had a few paychecks behind him now, he could afford to spend a little. If Chanyeol was at all interested in men, Sehun _was_ going to get his attention.

**Luhan  
Got it. Pick me up on your way home and we’ll go.**

**To: Luhan  
You’re the best, hyung.**


	2. Chapter 2

It turned out to be a good thing that Sehun invested in some better-fitting, more stylish work clothes, because after that, Sehun found himself running into Chanyeol _all the time_. 

Sometimes, he purposely orchestrated it, telling Chanyeol that whatever his issue was would be better fixed in person than remotely. Sometimes, he didn’t have to, because Chanyeol would ask him to come upstairs, or because the issue really _couldn’t_ be fixed remotely. And sometimes, they just ran into each other, while Sehun was on other tickets or someplace else in the building working on other projects. Once, Chanyeol even showed up down in the basement, apparently because he had to talk to Minseok, but he made a point of stopping by Sehun’s desk and hanging all over him companionably and commenting on how nice the jade plant looked in his cube.

Chanyeol was friendly, warm, and touchy as hell, and every time he put a hand on Sehun’s shoulder or wrapped an arm around him or gave him a friendly hug, Sehun fell a little bit deeper. The older man was a constant presence in Sehun’s working life, and flitted in and out of his thoughts, his dreams. Sehun hadn’t had a crush this bad since high school and it was both frustrating and exhilarating.

Thursday night about three months into the job, Sehun got a call at home, on his personal cell phone, from an unknown number. He answered warily, and the sound of a familiar bone-shaking bass voice made his heart drop into his toes and then immediately leap right into his throat.

_“Hi, is this Sehun?”_

Sehun swallowed, trying to remember how to breathe. “Chanyeol?” he asked, immediately getting Luhan’s attention from across the room.

_“Haha, yeah, it’s me. Look, I am really, really, super duper sorry to be calling you at home, but I am in dire straights here.”_

A work call. Okay. Sehun had no idea how Chanyeol had gotten his cell phone number, but he couldn’t really bring himself to mind too much. Automatically, he moved for his laptop, yanking it into his lap and beginning the process of VPN-ing into his work computer. “What’s the issue?” he asked.

 _“Well, see, I have this really, really big client presentation tomorrow, and it was given to me last-second so I’ve been staying late to work on it for days. But tonight I can’t get on any of the network drives. I’ve tried everything I could think of.”_ He breathed out a long, frustrated sigh. _“Like I said, I’m really sorry. But I_ have _to finish this tonight.”_

Poor guy sounded totally desperate. “Well, fortunately for you, you have me in your court,” Sehun said. “Okay, well, it doesn’t look like a network issue, since I was able to get into my own PC. Let me see if I can get to yours…” He clicked over and waited. Sure enough, within moments an error message came back. “Yep, you’re off the network. You checked the cables, restarted your machine, that kind of thing?”

_“Yeah, all of that, twice. I’m so sorry.”_

“Dude, it’s okay, stop apologizing,” Sehun said amusedly. “I guess I have to come in and look at it. Uh, I’ve never come in after hours before, anything I should know?”

_“Bring your keycard. The back door’s the only one that will open at this time of night. Thanks, Sehun, I owe you big time.”_

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sehun murmured. “We’ll see if I can fix it. Okay, see you in a few.” He hung up.

Luhan’s eyebrow was aiming for new levels of leering. “Booty call?” he asked.

“Shut up and help me figure out what to wear.”

After a quick argument about whether Sehun had to dress professionally for an after-hours call, Luhan convinced him to go with a casual but still-nice grey button-down shirt and the tightest, sleekest, ass-hugging-est dark-wash jeans he owned. “After all,” Luhan pointed out, “this is a great chance to show him you’re not always so starched and professional.” With that in mind, Sehun broke down his usual slicked-back workday hairstyle, taking advantage of the half-worn-through product to swoop his bleached hair up and off his face messily. Ten minutes later and with a thumb’s-up from his roommate, Sehun left for the office.

The building was 90% dark and actually pretty creepy when Sehun let himself in the back door and headed up the stairs. He wasn’t used to it being so quiet, and couldn’t help but feel like an intruder, someone who didn’t belong.

The fourth floor was mostly the same, almost entirely dark except for the one bank of lights over the northwest corner. “Hey,” Sehun called out as he approached, not wanting to startle Chanyeol.

He heard Chanyeol before he saw him, hidden within the maze of cubicles. “Hi,” Chanyeol said, sounding rather morose. “Thanks again, really. I’m so sorry about this.”

Sehun opened his mouth to tell Chanyeol to stop apologizing already, but then he came around the corner and laid eyes on him and his words got caught in his throat.

Holy fucking _wow_.

Apparently, Chanyeol did not think it was necessary to dress professionally when alone in the building after hours, because he too was in jeans, a relaxed cut that somehow still managed to cling to his long legs. But that wasn’t what made Sehun’s throat go dry and his cock leap to attention. It was the shirt, a ratty, golden-yellow Ninja Turtles t-shirt that was at _least_ four sizes too small and molded to his body in a way that made Sehun want to whimper, to drop to his knees and beg to be allowed to blow him.

Chanyeol spotted him looking - how could he not, Sehun’s eyes were locked onto his pecs and he was all but _drooling_ \- and laughed self-consciously. “Uh, sorry about this,” he said, waving a hand at his clothes. “I wasn’t planning on being seen tonight.”

Mentally slapping himself, Sehun tore his eyes away from the way the too-tight sleeves bunched up in the juncture between Chanyeol’s deltoids and biceps and swallowed down his arousal as best he could. He was proud of how little his voice shook, how much flirtatious teasing he managed to infuse into his tone when he said, “Nice shirt. I used to be really into the Ninja Turtles.”

When he wasn’t looking at Chanyeol, the man’s deep laugh was actually kind of reassuring. “Haha, yeah, I’ve had this shirt for ages. Since...since middle school, I think. Never could bring myself to get rid of it.”

Sitting down in Chanyeol’s chair, Sehun glanced back up at him before he could stop himself. Yeah, that was definitely a child’s shirt, stretched out and worn almost transparent in places. Sehun could see the faint outline of shifting abdominal muscles as Chanyeol breathed, and it was a little too short, ending a tiny bit above his beltline and revealing a bare centimeter of pale, taut belly, and fuck, _fuck,_ he was never going to make it through tonight. He was going to implode with repressed desire and Luhan would have to come clean him off the floor with a mop.

Dropping his left hand under the desk so Chanyeol couldn’t see him dig his nails harshly into his palm, Sehun took the mouse with his right and forced himself to work. 

“Should I go…?” Chanyeol asked softly from behind him.

“No,” Sehun said, a little too quickly. He didn’t look up this time, though. “I mean, I might need to ask you questions. Just...hang on a minute, okay?”

A deep, wordless noise of assent, and the chair dipped a little, telling Sehun that Chanyeol was leaning on the back. He took a deep breath and started digging.

Fifteen minutes later, he was so frustrated that even Chanyeol’s bare, muscular arms couldn’t distract him. “This makes no fucking sense,” he snarled, all sense of propriety totally gone. “Your settings are all correct. The cables are plugged in. It’s even sending and receiving traffic, but when I ping the network, nothing.” Huffing, he plugged in his USB and started up his most in-depth diagnostic program, the one that would take apart the packets piece by piece and spit back the raw data.

The sigh from behind him was remorseful. “I’m really sorry, Sehun.”

Sehun looked back over his head before he could think the better of it. Hnnnnng _fuck_ the man was so damn attractive. “We don’t know that it’s your fault yet,” he muttered, quickly turning back around. “I need to figure out what the problem is, first.” He planted his elbow on the desk and dropped his chin into his hand, narrowing his eyes at the screen. “It isn’t anything on this end,” he thought out loud, “I’ve checked everything there is to check. And it can’t be anything on the other end, since every other computer is just fine. So maybe…” A thought occurred to him, and Sehun pushed back the chair, feeling Chanyeol’s weight hurriedly move away as he slid off the chair and onto the floor under the desk. He pulled out the network cable and inspected it, pushed his little finger inside the port to make sure nothing was blocking it, then blinked. “Wait. The cable I gave you when I set up this machine was blue.” He backed out from under the desk and held the cable up to show Chanyeol. “Why is this one yellow?”

His eyes met Chanyeol’s, and he stopped, because there was something on Chanyeol’s face, something he hadn’t seen before. Something that made Chanyeol’s eyes dark and his lips part softly, something that made color rise in his cheeks. He was breathing a little harder than before, and Sehun only noticed because in that shirt every shift of his body was highlighted more than if he was naked, stretch lines appearing in the fabric over his chest as it expanded with his breath. Fascinated, Sehun forgot what he was about to say and just stared, and Chanyeol stared back, dark eyes roving over his face like he was looking for something. 

Chanyeol cleared his throat, breaking the spell. He looked away, his pink cheeks flushing red, and Sehun took a deep breath of his own and wondered what the hell had just happened. His eyes happened to slide down Chanyeol’s body - difficult not to, really, it was _such_ a nice body - and landed on the fly of his jeans, which was...a little more full than before?

Sehun blinked.

Was that his imagination?

“Um.” Chanyeol shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his chest. The position made his chest and arms look utterly lickable but Sehun’s attention was drawn back down, because the movement of his thighs changed the topography of his jeans, and that was, in fact, very _definitely_ a bulge happening there. And Sehun, who was an avid admirer of men’s bulges, could tell that it was still mostly a soft one by the way it lay, and the _tsunami_ of want that followed nearly knocked him to the floor. Because if Chanyeol filled out his jeans like that when he was only _half_ hard, Sehun wanted nothing more than the opportunity to get him _all the way_ hard.

He was so busy drooling he almost didn’t hear what Chanyeol said. “What?”

“I said, what’s the significance of a yellow cable?” Chanyeol cocked his head. “Does that mean it’s not the right kind of cable or something?” 

Right. Work. Solving IT mysteries. “No, the color doesn’t matter,” Sehun said. “It just means someone changed the cable. And I’m going to guess that someone was not you?” Chanyeol nodded. “And no one else but me has come to do any work on your computer?”

That made Chanyeol grin. “Nah, you’re my one and only.”

Oh, if only that were true. “Then maybe this was deliberate,” Sehun said. “I just need...here, let me test something.” He scrambled out from under the desk and crawled unceremoniously under the neighboring one, detaching the network cable from that station. He had to twist to get to the network switch, and heard a sharp intake of breath behind him.

Sehun looked over his shoulder and caught Chanyeol staring, eyes wide and mouth open, right at his ass.

Oh.

He quickly looked back to what he was doing, hiding his smile and silently thanking Luhan for convincing him to wear these jeans. Just to test his theory, Sehun dropped down from his hands to his elbows, arching his back as he unplugged the cable from the switch, a purposeful mirror of the position he’d dearly like to be taking in front of Chanyeol in another way, face down and ass up. He barely caught a soft but deep groan from behind him, and had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from moaning in response.

Chanyeol wanted his ass. This was progress.

Sehun had, in the past, been accused of being a terrible tease. He often protested that it was not deliberate, but right now it definitely _was_. That deep little groan made him hungry for more and Sehun didn’t even think as he slunk back out from under the desk, arching and shifting his body in ways that were probably more suited to a club dance floor than the office. He could have stood to make his way back under Chanyeol’s desk, but he didn’t, crawling over the carpet with his ass twitching side to side and his shoulderblades rolling like a cat’s. 

He didn’t get another vocal reaction, though, until he leaned under Chanyeol’s desk to switch the cable out, dropping his shoulders nearly to the floor, keeping his knees spread apart so that his ass was angled right at Chanyeol and knowing full well the underside of his own half-stiff bulge was visible between his slim thighs. Chanyeol’s aroused moan was too loud in the silent space, and was sharply cut off, like he’d clamped his lips shut to try and stop it. Sehun’s cock jumped at the sound of it, but he pretended he hadn’t heard and finished switching the cable, backing out and sitting back on his heels rather than getting to his feet.

“Try it now,” he said, tilting his head up to look at Chanyeol innocently. Want was scribbled all over Chanyeol’s face, but he did as Sehun asked, sitting down in the chair next to Sehun to try to access his files.

It worked. Sehun crowed his triumph and Chanyeol turned to him with awe in his eyes. 

“You did it,” he breathed. Grinning madly, Sehun held out his arms, and with a bare moment’s hesitation, Chanyeol reached down and wrapped him up in a hug. Sehun pulled him close, revelling in the feel of his body not in a wool-blend sportcoat, and held back a sigh of contentment.

Chanyeol’s hands slid lower than usual, curved around the sides of Sehun’s waist. “Okay,” he murmured, “so what was the issue?”

Reluctantly, Sehun pulled back. He kept his hands on Chanyeol’s shoulders longer than was strictly necessary, fingers trailing against his soft shirt when he finally let them drop. “Not 100% certain yet,” he admitted. “You get working on your presentation, I’ll see what I can find out.”

With a thankful smile, Chanyeol turned to his computer, and Sehun pulled himself away and commandeered a nearby desk to work.

In a stroke of brilliant foresight, since Chanyeol had said it was a network issue, Sehun had brought his cabling tools. He spent the next few minutes stripping the cable open and made a noise of triumph when he found it.

“I thought so,” he said. “It’s a trick cable. The pins are wired the wrong way, it creates a feedback loop.” Chanyeol turned his chair to look at him, and Sehun held the half-destroyed cable up. “Either someone’s a fucking idiot, or this was deliberate. And since there was no reason for anyone to change out your cables, I’m gonna go with deliberate.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Piss anyone off recently?”

Chanyeol sighed, rubbing his forehead with one big, square hand. “Not as such,” he muttered. “But Baekhyun and I play pranks on each other a lot. I’d bet you he was behind this.”

Sehun snorted. “Not without help,” he said. “This requires more than your average end-user computer knowledge; it’s not like they just sell bad cables like this on the Internet. I really doubt this was his idea alone.”

“Great.” Chanyeol’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “That means he’s got reinforcements.”

“So do you,” Sehun said archly. Chanyeol blinked, and then grinned widely, thankfulness spreading over his face and warming Sehun’s cold heart. “Here’s what we do. I’m gonna put this cable back the way I found it and plug it in to _his_ computer. It’s this one, right?” He pointed at the desk he was sitting at, and Chanyeol nodded. “Tomorrow, when he can’t get on the network, tell him you were here last night and when you couldn’t get online, you switched the cables and forgot to switch them back. Don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it killed like...” He glanced at the clock. “Two hours of your time. And let _him_ deal with asking support for a new one.”

Chanyeol’s wide grin turned a little bit dastardly. Sehun tried not to swoon. “I like the way you think, man,” he rumbled. 

It was the work of a few moments to re-wire the cable and attach a new connector, and Sehun slipped under the desk to plug it back in. He glanced at Chanyeol as he came back out and caught him staring again, and this time, in a stroke of bravery, he wiggled his ass very deliberately, letting Chanyeol know he knew he was looking. Chanyeol instantly turned away, his face abruptly going bright red, and Sehun bit back his grin as he got to his feet.

“Is that all you need?” he asked, and tried, for the sake of the tattered remains of their professional relationship, to keep it from sounding double-entendre-y.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol replied, hurriedly getting to his feet. “Seriously, Sehun, thank you so much. I would have been way up shit creek without you.” He reached out, like he was going to pull Sehun in for another hug, but his hands stopped halfway between them and pulled back, looking uncomfortable.

Shit. That probably meant Sehun had done enough envelope-pushing for one night. “Let me know how Baekhyun responds tomorrow morning,” he said, with a cheerful smile plastered on his face.

“I will.” The hesitation - and then, the determination - was readily apparent on Chanyeol’s expressive face; he visibly screwed up his courage and pulled Sehun in for the closest, tightest hug to date. Sehun melted against him, inappropriately close and comfortable. Chanyeol was just the right height and he felt so _nice_.

It didn’t last, of course, and way too soon the older man was pulling away. “Call me if you have any more late-night emergencies,” Sehun heard himself say, and Chanyeol laughed and agreed.

Sehun galloped down four flights of stairs and let himself out with a happy spring in his step. He barely saw the road on his drive home, too busy with thoughts of Chanyeol’s voice, his hands, his shoulders, his smile, and when he got home he all but ignored Luhan’s curious questions and went straight to his room, flopped on his back on his bed, and plunged his hand into his pants.

He came in minutes, with dark eyes behind dark specs in his mind and Chanyeol’s name on his lips.

 

##################################################

 

Sehun was fully expecting to hear from Chanyeol the next day, but he wasn’t expecting it to be first thing in the morning, within moments of him sitting down. The intercom buzzed and Chanyeol’s name came up on the screen and Sehun’s insides did a delighted little shimmy as he picked up the phone.

“Morning, stranger,” he said, trying to keep it friendly and not flirtatious.

 _“Hey, man.”_ Chanyeol’s voice never failed to make him shudder. _“Are you super busy today, or do you have a few minutes?”_

Sehun glanced at his massive, looming inbox. “I’m not too busy,” he lied. “Why, what do you need?”

 _“Would you be willing to help me set up the A/V for this presentation?”_ Chanyeol asked, sounding terribly apologetic about it. _“Every time I try to do something like this, something goes wrong. I thought I’d be preemptive today.”_

It made Sehun laugh. “Alright, I’ll be right up,” he said. “You have all the equipment already?”

 _“Yeah! It’s, uh, in a giant pile on the conference room table.”_ Sehun laughed again, and Chanyeol chuckled with him. _“Thanks, Sehun, you’re a lifesaver.”_

Chanyeol was already in the conference room when Sehun got there, his notes spread out on one side of the table and the pile of equipment on the other side. He looked up when Sehun entered, and Sehun felt slapped across the face with his handsomeness. Chanyeol was dressed the total opposite of the night before, his suit pristine and well-tailored, his tie knotted snugly against his collar, his hair done up in a sideswept quiff and his glasses nowhere to be seen. He looked like a supermodel and Sehun tried not to stare.

“Nice hair,” he said as he shut the door behind him and headed for the equipment.

A big hand immediately flew up, hovering over it. “Oh, right, I forgot,” Chanyeol muttered. “You like it? I got the idea from you.”

Wait, really? Sehun cocked his head. “How so?”

“Last night, when you came in, your hair was…” Chanyeol made a sort of vague upward gesture. “I don’t know, I thought it made you look older.” He shrugged. “I have a baby face, sometimes I need a little help getting taken seriously. Took me forever to figure it out, though.” His eyes wandered up to Sehun’s hair and back down again. “I think it looked better on you,” he murmured.

Sehun tried not to grin - it was the first time Chanyeol had made any comment at all on his looks - and patted Chanyeol’s shoulder. “You look great,” he said sincerely. “Very professional.” He wanted to leave his hand there, maybe cuddle up to Chanyeol’s side, but he refrained. “What’s the presentation on, anyway?”

He moved away, getting to work on the equipment. Chanyeol shrugged. “Product demonstration for a potential client,” he explained. “A _big_ one. They’re sending a dozen representatives and if I screw this up, we lose their business.” He glanced up, his smile tight around the eyes. “No pressure.”

“Right,” Sehun agreed, his stomach lurching in a new and different way. “Did you, you know, sleep at all last night?”

“Ha.” Chanyeol started gathering up his notes. Sehun watched his hands flick through the papers while his own were busy untangling cables. “I got...three hours, maybe? I only have to last until lunch; since I’ve had late nights all this week I’m leaving early.” He stilled, closing his eyes and letting out a long breath. “Okay. I’m gonna go over the client profile again. I’ll be back.”

He let himself out. His distraction removed, Sehun set to work on the audio visual equipment. It was nice kit, pretty modern and new, but there was not enough of it to go around so even though it would make everyone’s lives easier to have it permanently set up in the conference rooms, they had to cart it around and set it up every time someone had a meeting. Sehun had never been dispatched to set up A/V before, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out.

And because this was Chanyeol, and this was important, he took more time and care with it than normal, running the cables under furniture and against the walls, bundling them with cable ties and taping them down so they weren’t in the way, rather than letting them drape messily across aisleways. It would be easier to just wire the laptop on which Chanyeol’s presentation was loaded to the projector, but instead he took the time to set up wireless connectivity and test it, then set the laptop on the table next to the podium so Chanyeol wouldn’t have to look behind himself to know what slide he was on. He tested the speakers, the mic, the slide clicker; he moved around the room and made sure Chanyeol would be clearly heard no matter where his audience was. He even adjusted the projector’s brightness, wiping down the lens with a microfiber cloth. A little ridiculous, maybe, but it couldn’t hurt.

“Oh, Sehun, can you make sure that - ” Chanyeol cut himself off, blinking owlishly around the room from the doorway. “Oh. You already did. Cool.”

“Did what?” Sehun asked, waiting for the wireless mouse he’d brought up to install on the laptop. 

“Keep the cords out of the way,” Chanyeol muttered. He pulled the door closed behind him, his arms full of files. “Last time I wasn’t looking and I walked right into the cord. Pulled the whole shebang right off the table.” He shuddered. “Mortifying.”

“Shouldn’t be an issue today,” Sehun assured him. “How much time do we have?”

Chanyeol glanced at the clock. “They’ll be here any minute. Baekhyun is headed downstairs to meet them and bring them up.”

Sehun glanced at him. “How’d he take the cord thing?”

It drew a smile to Chanyeol’s face. “Looked like he was sucking a lemon,” he said cheerfully. “He was so obvious about being behind it. I played dumb, like you said, and he looked so annoyed.” He waggled his eyebrows and Sehun laughed. “Now I just have to figure out how to get him back,” he said.

“I have some ideas,” Sehun murmured. Chanyeol looked up in surprise and Sehun smiled mysteriously. “But we’ll talk about that afterwards. Here, your mic.” He held out the wireless microphone.

Chanyeol blinked. “Not the hand-held?”

“I figured it would be easier for you to use the clip-on one. Keep your hands free. You gesture a lot when you get excited, so.”

It earned him an eyebrow. “Well, you’re not wrong. Okay, lay it on me.” He held out his arms wide.

Oh. Sehun had figured he’d put it on himself...but he wasn’t complaining. “Where do you want the battery pack?” he asked, crossing the room to help Chanyeol put the mic on.

He got a shrug. “Wherever it doesn’t look like crap, I guess.”

The opportunity was too good to pass up. Sehun stepped right into Chanyeol’s space, sliding his hands under the suit coat and around Chanyeol’s slim waist to clip the battery pack to his belt at the small of his back. He kept his eyes down, pretending he was concentrating on getting it settled, and not on Chanyeol’s breath against his ear, his body less than a few centimeters away.

No one had ever accused Sehun of being timid, though, so he went right ahead and fished the cord up Chanyeol’s back, forcing himself to get even closer than before, one hand up Chanyeol’s coat and the other meeting it over his shoulder to grab the microphone. It put him right in the crook of Chanyeol’s arm, and it was hard to ignore how nicely he fit there, how Chanyeol was just a few centimeters taller and their bodies sort of curved towards each other. How Chanyeol’s head turned towards Sehun’s hair, how his arm lifted automatically, as if drawn to rest on Sehun’s waist, before stopping and dropping back down to his side.

Sehun clipped the microphone to Chanyeol’s collar and smoothed down his lapels, finally glancing up. Chanyeol was staring at him with completely unmistakable hunger in his eyes, and for the first time, Sehun felt like maybe his little game was dangerous, like he was playing with fire. Sehun was a flirt, and he knew it, but the way Chanyeol was looking at him made him think if he went too far, he was going to get back everything his flirting promised and then some.

The thought made him both nervous and breathless with anticipation. He might have stared up at Chanyeol for much longer than was appropriate, the tension swelling between them every second the silence stretched.

Voices outside the conference room had them stepping guiltily apart, heat sweeping up Sehun’s face to his ears as Chanyeol’s face paled. He took a deep breath, and then another, and Sehun wrapped a hand around Chanyeol’s shoulder and smiled as reassuringly as he could. “Kick ass,” he muttered, and Chanyeol flashed him a tight smile, tension sliding from his shoulders as his back straightened and his chin lifted. 

Sehun moved to the back of the room as Baekhyun opened the door and ushered the guests in. Chanyeol’s entire demeanor changed when he introduced himself, and Sehun should really have slipped out, but he was too fascinated. Telling himself he would stick around until he was sure the tech was working correctly, he kept to the back wall and watched silently as the guests sat and Chanyeol began.

No one expected a software demonstration to be great excitement, but Chanyeol actually made it surprisingly engaging. Sehun could, see, now, why he was in Sales - he had the perfect personality for it, cheerful and poised, and he really knew what he was talking about. 

It shouldn’t have been hot, but it really, really was.

Sehun waited until he couldn’t justify waiting any longer, then caught Chanyeol’s eye and shot him a grin and a thumbs’ up and quietly slipped out of the room.

He came back a few hours later, peering in the window to see if Chanyeol was just about done. It looked like he was wrapping up, answering questions, so Sehun hung around and waited until Chanyeol opened the door and ushered the guests past, smiling and joking with them as he walked them to the stairs. When they were gone, Sehun went in to break down the equipment and put it away. 

Chanyeol came back as Sehun was wrapping the cords around his arm. “Holy crap it’s over,” he sighed, collapsing against the door. 

“How’d it go?” Sehun asked.

“Really well, I think,” Chanyeol said. “Partially thanks to you; I don’t think I’ve ever gotten through a presentation without a tech problem before.” He looked up, and with the artifice gone from his posture he looked very tired. “Seriously. I can’t thank you enough. You’ve saved my ass like...five times this week.”

Pleased, Sehun smiled, ducking his head. “Don’t mention it,” he murmured. “It’s my job.”

“It isn’t, and you know it,” Chanyeol argued. “Listen. Let me take you to dinner tonight.”

Sehun looked up sharply.

“Just to thank you,” Chanyeol clarified. “There’s a bar down the street, they have a pretty good menu.” 

His heart pounding, Sehun raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were going home early?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “I’ll pick you up when you get off.” He blinked. “Unless you’re busy?”

“No,” Sehun said, too quickly. “No, I’m free.” He let a slow smile crawl over his face. “I get off at five.”

“I know,” Chanyeol rumbled. “That’s why I don’t bother putting in help requests after four-thirty.” He grinned, and Sehun grinned back, that little acknowledgement that Chanyeol paid attention to his schedule making him feel warm. “Meet you at the back door?”

“Sure.” 

Chanyeol shot him a thumb’s up and let himself out of the conference room, leaving Sehun to finish cleaning up, his mind buzzing with anticipation.

 

##################################################

 

Sehun was a little bit worried that dinner would be awkward, but he shouldn’t have been. Chanyeol showed up in casual clothes with a casual attitude and before their drinks even arrived he had Sehun laughing. They ended up spending half their time talking cheerfully about nothing and half their time plotting how to get back at Baekhyun.

Chanyeol was right about the bar - the food was good, the alcohol kept coming, and it was just really nice to spend time with him like this. Sehun lost control of his flirt about two beers in, and to his surprise - and _delight_ \- Chanyeol not only noticed, he gave back as good as he got. Long calves brushed against Sehun’s ankles under the table, dark eyes got darker as Sehun’s manner loosened, big hands found excuses to trail against Sehun’s skin and innuendos flew across the table like Cupid’s arrows. 

The almost-certain knowledge that his attraction was returned was heady, and as their plates were cleared away and the bill brought, Sehun found himself trying to figure out what he could say to keep the night from ending. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted to crawl into Chanyeol’s lap and kiss the fuck out of him. And if Chanyeol was just a friend, Sehun would have simply said so, but he was a _co-worker_ and Sehun hadn’t been in the professional workplace long enough to know what the protocol was in situations like this. Could he act on this...whatever it was? Or was the flirting as far as they were ever going to get?

Three beers made him bold, and as they were walking out of the bar Sehun decided to push his luck. He slipped his fingers around Chanyeol’s elbow, waiting until they were out of sight of the doors and headed down the alleyway towards the parking lot before sliding his hand slowly and purposely down Chanyeol’s arm, delicately tracing out tendons and veins and then pushing his fingers between Chanyeol’s. Long, thick fingers curled around his own, and Sehun looked up just as Chanyeol looked down.

They slowed, then came to a stop, alone in the deserted alleyway, as if reading each other’s minds. Chanyeol’s gaze was heavy, his lips wet and parted, his lashes drooping as he leaned down, and with his heart in his throat, Sehun leaned up to meet him halfway, pressing his lips to Chanyeol’s.

He tasted like beer and barbeque, his mouth warm and slick, and when Sehun made a small, pleased noise and opened his mouth, Chanyeol’s moved right along with him. The kiss moved from chaste to sensual to smouldering in seconds, and Sehun’s head spun with desire as long arms wrapped around the small of Sehun’s back and pulled him close. His hands were greedy as Chanyeol overtook him, running all over the older man’s body, mapping out his form. They wrapped around his biceps and squeezed, and Chanyeol groaned into his mouth, his own grip tightening. 

Suddenly they were moving, and Sehun let himself be pliant in Chanyeol’s strong hands, let himself be moved until his shoulders hit cold brick. Chanyeol pressed up against him, firm and warm, his tongue halfway down Sehun’s throat and his hands drifting down to wrap possessively around Sehun’s ass and squeeze. Eager, Sehun cocked his hips back and whimpered against Chanyeol’s lips, trying to communicate _never stop touching me_ without using the words. He felt more than heard Chanyeol growl possessively, his pulse leaping, and as Chanyeol kneaded his hands into Sehun’s ass, Sehun gasped for air, breaking the kiss.

The moment he broke away, Chanyeol bent his head and attached his lips to Sehun’s jawline, back near his ear. He started laying wet, sharp kisses down Sehun’s throat, lavishing attention upon his skin, and Sehun clutched at him and moaned, his head falling back against the brick. Giddy and warm, oversensitive, and _well_ on his way to hard as a rock, Sehun wanted to speak, to tell Chanyeol how good that felt, how much he’d wanted this, please please don’t stop, _take me_ \- but he couldn’t make his lips form the words, too afraid that using language would break the spell. But he wanted Chanyeol to know, so he shifted his hips, spreading his thighs and pulling Chanyeol between them so that his stiffening cock was pushed against Chanyeol’s hard thigh. The pressure made him pulse and groan.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol whispered against his neck, immediately lifting his knee to grind Sehun against him. Sehun gasped and whimpered and rolled his hips down eagerly, and Chanyeol made a pained noise. “You little goddamned _tease._ ”

The tone of his deep voice was _dangerous_ , and the thrill it sent down Sehun’s spine even more so. “So I’ve been told,” he breathed. “Do you want me?”

Big fingers wrapped around Sehun’s wrist and guided it down between them, pressing his palm to a _very_ impressive bulge in Chanyeol’s jeans. “What do you think?” Chanyeol growled in his ear. And _that_ was an invitation if ever Sehun had heard one, so he curled his fingers in, feeling around until he figured out which way Chanyeol’s cock was facing and then laying his palm flat against it, the heel of his hand grinding against the underside of the head and his fingers stretching down the shaft. He squeezed, and Chanyeol rocked his hips forward, his panting breath warm on the side of Sehun’s face.

The alley was silent but for gasped breaths and half-choked moans, but even if a marathon had gone past Sehun would have been senseless to it. Chanyeol’s shoulders were broad enough to block out the light, to make him feel sheltered; the world felt hazy and unreal, a fog of pleasure. Nothing existed outside of the pressure on his cock, the hardness in his hand, the mouth on his skin and the heat of the body that held him down.

Too soon, though, Chanyeol’s hands clenched into Sehun’s shirt; his hips stopped moving and his mouth moved away. “We should stop,” he gasped, sounding sexy and needy and wrecked and not at all convincing. “This is a bad idea.”

“Why?” Sehun breathed. He tightened his grip and let it stay that way, admiring how thick the shaft in his hand felt, how Chanyeol’s pulse raced against his palm. 

“We work together,” Chanyeol groaned. “It’s...it’s not a good idea.”

He needed convincing. Sehun could be very convincing. He tilted his head, nosing along Chanyeol’s neck the way Chanyeol had just been doing to him. “Take me home with you,” he purred against Chanyeol’s earlobe, loving the full-body shudder that the words elicited. “I’ve got some _good ideas._ ” He pressed an openmouthed, tongue-first kiss to Chanyeol’s pulse point, smiling when he felt it leap against his lips.

“I want to,” Chanyeol growled, the words as weighty as his hands. “Believe me, I _want_ to. But really, it’s a _bad plan._ ” He swallowed heavily, then visibly screwed up his will and pushed Sehun away, stepping back to put space between them.

Disappointment sunk like lead in Sehun’s veins, stilling his body. It was a bare half a meter between them, but it felt like a chasm. “ _Chanyeol,_ ” he whined, sounding petty and pathetic and needy and not finding it in him to care. Chanyeol’s eyes fluttered shut, his hands clenched into fists at his sides; his cock looked like a fucking _mountain_ in those jeans and Sehun was just _not okay with this._

“Don’t,” Chanyeol said. “Don’t say my name...like that.”

“How do you want me to say it?” Sehun challenged, too horny and too upset by this turn of events to think before he spoke. “ _Chanyeol,_ ” he breathed, infusing every gram of need and attraction he had into two syllables. He watched Chanyeol’s cock visibly jerk, watched his expression tighten with want and his forearms striate with the effort of keeping his fists clenched at his sides.

“ _Don’t,_ ” he snarled. “I won’t do this. Not _again_.”

Sehun stopped. Wait, what?

Not _again?_

Chanyeol’s eyes slowly opened, black and shuttered in the streetlight. And, in that moment, Sehun was really, violently struck by the knowledge that he honestly knew _nothing_ about this man. They stared at each other, and as Sehun watched, Chanyeol’s hands unclenched, his shoulders relaxed, his chin lifted. It was exactly the face he put on for clients and Sehun’s stomach dropped into his toes.

“I should take you back to your car,” Chanyeol murmured. Numbly, Sehun nodded, and as Chanyeol turned, Sehun fell into step beside him.

The ride back to the office was silent and awkward, but fortunately, not long. Chanyeol pulled into the space next to Sehun’s car, the last one in the lot, and Sehun hesitated before getting out of the car, turning towards Chanyeol.

“You’re sure?” he asked softly, hearing vulnerability in his own voice he couldn’t quite mask.

Chanyeol’s lips pressed into a thin line. Without warning, he reached over and curled his fingers into Sehun’s collar, tugging him partway over the gap between the seats. Sehun made a small, surprised noise, but when he felt Chanyeol’s lips on his, melted against him. This kiss wasn’t heat and drunken passion like the last one, it was promise.

Promise never to be fulfilled, it seemed, because too soon Chanyeol let him go, heaving out a very resigned breath. “I’m sure,” he said, trying on a reassuring smile that did not come near his eyes. “We should probably forget tonight ever happened. Trust me, it’s better.”

Yeah, right. Even with the beer in his system, Sehun knew there was no _way_ he was forgetting this. But he nodded, and thanked Chanyeol quietly for dinner, and accepted his regretful smile and the apology in his eyes. He got out of Chanyeol’s car and into his own, and Chanyeol drove away. 

It was a few minutes before Sehun did the same.


	3. Chapter 3

There were a few reasons why Luhan was Sehun’s favorite hyung, and his ability to talk Sehun off a cliff was one of them.

“He’s right,” Luhan had said. “It’s really not a good idea to get involved with co-workers, even if they work in a different department.” And Sehun had thought about it a lot, and taken the whole weekend to cool off, and by Monday morning he was ready to go back to work as a Mature Professional Adult who did not jump co-workers or lust after their body (or hands, or voice, or smile.) 

He half-expected to have a ticket from Chanyeol waiting for him the moment he logged in, but there was nothing. 

And there continued to be nothing, for four days straight. 

On Friday morning, Sehun logged in again, and again, nothing from Chanyeol. He literally had not heard from the man in nearly a week, and that meant that he powered through his inbox and even had time to take on a few extra projects, but it was still worrisome. Chanyeol had never gone more than 24 hours without needing help with _something_ , and Sehun knew he wasn’t getting help from Jongin or Tao, so how was he managing? How long would it be before he tried to fix something himself and broke his entire PC - or brought down the network?

As it turned out, the answer was approximately two more hours.

The phone rang, and Sehun glanced at the ID. He saw Chanyeol’s name and his heart leapt into his throat like a nervous rabbit. He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he was a Professional Adult, and answered the phone. “This is Sehun.”

“Hey. It’s...it’s Chanyeol.” He sounded as nervous as Sehun felt and for some reason, that made Sehun’s nerves calm somewhat.

“So it says on the display,” he teased lightly. “What can I do for you?”

“I. Um. Look, don’t laugh at me, okay?” Chanyeol said quietly. 

He sounded vulnerable, and Sehun immediately softened. “Never,” he murmured. “What’s wrong?”

“...All my icons are gone. I can’t find my programs, my files, the shortcuts you put for me...nothing.”

Sehun closed his eyes and tried very, very hard not to laugh, because he promised he wouldn’t. Heaven forbid Chanyeol learn how to use the file manager. Or the _start menu_. “Did you already try restarting it?”

“Yeah, of course.”

At least he’d gotten him that much trained. “Alright, I’ll check it out. Give me a few minutes.”

Chanyeol exhaled heavily into the phone. “Thank you, Sehun,” he said, sounding very sincere. 

“Anytime,” Sehun replied, and he hoped Chanyeol knew he meant it.

Fortunately, he was pretty sure he knew what was causing this particular glitch, and with about twenty seconds of poking about he found it. Ten seconds later, he was calling Chanyeol back.

“Restart your PC again,” he said, without bothering to say hello.

“Wait, really?” Chanyeol asked, but Sehun could hear the click of his mouse in the background. “But you haven’t even logged on to my computer or anything!”

It was hard to keep fondness from curling in his chest. Chanyeol’s wonder at Sehun’s simple troubleshooting was adorable. “It wasn’t a problem with your computer at all,” he explained, trying to keep it as simple as possible. The network had glitched and assigned Chanyeol a temporary profile when he signed in. Not a terribly unusual thing, but he knew Chanyeol would have no clue what he was talking about. “There was an error with the network, a pretty common one. It happens. Hopefully it’s fixed.”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out in a minute.” There was silence on the line for a few seconds, and then Chanyeol murmured, “How have you been?”

Sehun blinked. “Fine?” he guessed. “I mean. Busy, you know. But fine.” He glanced over at his inbox, which was starting to pile up again. “I think Minseok’s starting to trust me more with project work,” he said, keeping it cheery and work-related. “He’s got me working on setting up a virtual server for Implementation.”

“I have no idea what that means but it sounds important. Good for you,” Chanyeol said, and Sehun laughed, because it wasn’t actually particularly important, in the grand scheme of things, but it was certainly a step up from troubleshooting. “Oh, look, my icons are back. You’re magical.”

“You’re welcome,” Sehun told him. “And. Just. Call me if you need anything, okay? I’m here.”

What he meant was _don’t let last Friday get in the way of either of us doing our jobs_ , but he didn’t realize how... _personal_...it sounded until Chanyeol went quiet on the other end. 

“Crap,” he muttered. “I mean. With your computer. You know.”

It dragged a laugh out of Chanyeol, genuine if a little strained. “Right, yeah. Okay. Hey...thanks.”

Sehun smiled. “Yeah.”

 

##################################################

 

After that, things returned somewhat to normal. Sehun didn’t receive quite as many tickets from Chanyeol anymore, but he told himself that was a product of Chanyeol having better equipment and Sehun badgering him about good PC practices and basic troubleshooting on his own. And when they did call, or run into each other in the halls, the small talk was banal and safe. The closest they ever got to anything personal was Sehun giving Chanyeol advice on his ongoing prank war with Baekhyun.

It was fine. Really. Sehun was busy with his own work and did not have time to be indulging in inappropriate thoughts about his coworker. 

He didn’t have time to think about Chanyeol going home after a long day at work, slowly and tiredly removing each layer of his perfectly-pressed suit and stepping into a steamy shower to wash away the stress, to jerk it down the drain.

He didn’t imagine the next time Chanyeol would call him for help after hours, and thank Sehun for saving the day by spreading him out on his desk and fingering him with big, talented hands until Sehun came apart underneath him.

He _definitely_ didn’t lose an hour of working time fantasizing when Chanyeol made an offhand comment about playing guitar back in university, imagining that he was secretly an underground rock star and that his firm chest was secretly decorated in black ink and that if Sehun stumbled into one of his shows, Chanyeol would bring him backstage and secretly fuck him in the dressing rooms.

He didn’t shiver and harden when Chanyeol merely chuckled, deep and full, in his ear over the phone.

Nope.

...Okay, so maybe Sehun had his weak days.

But everything was fine, really, until Chanyeol sent him an email with the subject line _important client presentation - the legend returns!_ and Sehun was climbing four flights of stairs to help Chanyeol with the equipment.

There was another man upstairs with Chanyeol this time, going over notes with him. Sehun vaguely recognized him but Chanyeol introduced him as Kyuhyun, Chanyeol’s partner on this project and the client’s Implementation Specialist. It turned out, they would be presenting together today, and since the presentation required a lot more tech things this time, like training laptops for the guests, Chanyeol basically puppy-eyed Sehun into staying for the entire thing. Sehun of course agreed, and even Kyuhyun made a comment on how much easier Sehun made the setup process go, and when Kyuhyun headed downstairs to meet the guests and bring them up, Sehun helped Chanyeol put on his mic and resolutely did _not_ pop a boner from how close he was to touching the older man.

(Holy _crap_ he was hot.)

The presentation went very well. Chanyeol introduced both Kyuhyun and, to Sehun’s surprise, Sehun himself to the guests, commenting that Sehun would be there in case there were technical issues. And as Kyuhyun conducted the training, Sehun did find himself gently helping the clients with the tech, even as Chanyeol was helping them with questions on the process. The whole thing felt very upbeat and positive, and the clients seemed to enjoy it.

Both Sehun and Chanyeol were elated at the end, and when Kyuhyun left to escort the clients out, Sehun practically bounced over to Chanyeol, reaching around him to help pull off his mic pack out of sheer habit.

To his surprise, he felt a hand rest gently at the small of his back. He looked up into Chanyeol’s eyes, and the poorly disguised affection and lust there halted his breath.

The next thing he knew, he was panting and whimpering into Chanyeol’s mouth as Chanyeol kissed him frantically, walking him two steps backwards until his thighs hit the conference room table. He collapsed onto it, plopping his butt down with his thighs instinctively spread to welcome Chanyeol between them, which is exactly where Chanyeol went, leaning over him with one hand braced on the table and the other cupping the back of Sehun’s head as they licked into each other’s mouths.

Sehun’s hands were wrapping around Chanyeol’s hips with full intent of pulling him in closer when a noise outside the conference room door had them startling apart. Sehun managed to get off the conference room table and put a respectable distance between them before Kyuhyun opened the door. “Hey,” he said, “I wanted to go write down some follow-up notes before they slip my mind. You guys okay to clean up? Good, thanks.” And without waiting for an answer, he shut the door again and was gone.

“Ass,” Chanyeol muttered, but it was without heat, and distracted. He half-turned to Sehun, his eyes downcast. Sehun caught an impression of hardness in the front of his pressed suit pants and tried not to whine and grab for it like a greedy child. “Shit. Sehun. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m a terrible person.”

Sehun huffed. “Now who’s being a tease?” He gestured at his own crotch, where his cock was eagerly wondering why there wasn’t still kissing and touching happening. Chanyeol glanced at it and then closed his eyes tightly, going bright red.

“I swear to you,” he said, his voice rough, “I don’t usually have this much trouble keeping it in my pants. Uh. So to speak. I don’t know why I keep...I don’t know, _assaulting_ you.” He opened one eye gingerly, half-meeting Sehun’s gaze with cringing apology written in his every line. “You should be reporting me to HR, to be honest.”

“ _Chanyeol,_ ” Sehun said, crossing his arms in exasperation, “it isn’t harassment if I’m _willing_.”

Chanyeol stared at him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sehun huffed. “Look. You’re hot as hell. I want you. Clearly, you want me. Why does this have to be a problem?” He did everything he could to keep his tone low and even, and not get whiny, because _sounding_ like the pouty child he currently _felt_ like was probably not going to win him points. He just. He _wanted_. And no matter how much he rationalized it, he couldn’t really convince himself that it wouldn’t be _completely worth it_ to give this a shot.

Clearly, though, Chanyeol did not feel the same way, because Sehun watched as his expression closed off yet _again_ and had to bite his lip from screaming in frustration. 

“Kid,” Chanyeol rumbled, “attraction isn’t enough.” 

He abruptly turned on his heel and left the room, leaving Sehun behind with a room full of tech to disassemble and a gut full of confused uneasiness.

 

##################################################

 

It took Sehun a good half an hour to clean up and pack away all that tech by himself, but he finally got it loaded onto a cart and out the door. He was half-hoping Chanyeol would be waiting at his desk, so that Sehun could talk to him and maybe apologize or something, but to his surprise, it wasn’t Chanyeol waiting for him, but his friend and co-worker, Baekhyun.

“Need a hand?” Baekhyun asked, his voice low, and Sehun didn’t need to know him well to see in his eyes that he wanted to Talk. Swallowing a burst of nerves, Sehun nodded, and Baekhyun took the box of equipment out of his hands so Sehun could concentrate on the cart. 

They didn’t speak until they were in the elevator, a creaky old thing that Sehun avoided unless strictly necessary. But the moment the doors were closed, Baekhyun rounded on him.

“Okay. Something is up and Yeol won’t tell me what the fuck it is. He’s really upset. Clue a guy in.”

Shit. Sehun dropped his eyes. How much could he say? How close were Chanyeol and Baekhyun, really?

“I don’t...really know,” he hedged. “He...I...look, please do not repeat this to anyone.” Baekhyun nodded solemnly, and Sehun sighed. “I really...uh, like him, I guess.” That sounded so _juvenile_. Sehun tried again. “I’m _attracted_ to him. And I think he’s...no, I _know_ he’s attracted to me, too.” The elevator doors opened, and Sehun lowered his voice as they walked out into the tech offices, headed back towards the equipment closet. “I haven’t been _pushing_ him or anything like that, but he keeps...starting something, and then abruptly pulling away.” Understanding dawned on Baekhyun’s face, and Sehun shrugged helplessly. “I think it would be better if we just gave it a shot, you know? And if it doesn’t work than at least we got it out of our systems. Better than...I don’t know. Whatever the hell _this_ is.”

They reached equipment storage, and Baekhyun closed the door behind them and sighed heavily. “Dammit,” he said. “And here I was hoping that…”

 

Unloading laptops and putting them away, Sehun eyeballed him. Clearly, he knew something. “Any light you could shed on this would be appreciated,” he muttered.

Baekhyun eyeballed him right back. “Important question,” he said. “Do you want Chanyeol for sex-type purposes alone, or are you looking for a relationship?”

Sehun blinked, pausing mid-action. “Um. I hadn’t...thought that far?” He shrugged. “I don’t know that I’m really... _looking_ for a relationship right now.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth, but it wasn’t a happy one. “That, right there, is your problem,” he said. “Chanyeol’s been down that road, and it ripped him apart. He’s only just gotten himself put back together again, so it’s no wonder he’s gun-shy.”

Sehun frowned. “What happened?”

Baekhyun regarded him carefully for a moment, and then sighed. “Okay, so the whole story is not mine to tell, but basically there used to be this guy in Billing, Kyungsoo. Chanyeol...they had a thing going.” Sehun’s eyes widened. “A quiet thing, didn’t interfere with work or whatever, but a pretty serious thing, I guess. And Chanyeol wanted it to be more than just a _thing_ , you know? He wanted it to be a relationship, an actual one.” Baekhyun shrugged. “I guess Kyungsoo wasn’t on the same page. Chanyeol pushed, because Chanyeol is a stubborn idiot, and Kyungsoo got freaked out and ran. Things were horrible and awkward around here for about three months before Kyungsoo finally just got a job someplace else.”

Sehun leaned against the wall, considering that. “So...Chanyeol doesn’t want to get in a bad situation like that again,” he thought out loud. “He’s afraid...what, that our expectations won’t line up?”

Baekhyun snorted. “He’s probably afraid his heart will get stomped on again,” he said. “Think about it. And if you tell him I told you, I will _end_ you.” He pointed a threatening finger in Sehun’s face, and then let himself out, leaving Sehun alone in with the silent rows of tech equipment and his own thoughts.

 

##################################################

 

Sehun took Baekhyun’s advice to heart, and he thought about it.

He thought about it for _weeks_.

Like before, Chanyeol pretended nothing had happened. Like before, Sehun played along. He wasn’t blind to the way Chanyeol looked at him when he thought Sehun wasn’t paying attention, but nor was he blind to Chanyeol’s painful withdrawal whenever Sehun made the mistake of getting too close, too familiar. And the pattern became obvious soon enough - when Sehun flirted, Chanyeol could playfully and non-committally respond, but whenever Sehun said or did something that might be construed as wanting more, or actually _affectionate_ , Chanyeol’s entire being screamed _no, please don’t._

It was heartbreaking. And _terribly_ frustrating.

Because the more Sehun thought about it, the more attention he paid to Chanyeol, to his mannerisms, to his humor, to eternal enthusiasm and good cheer. And the more he noticed little things, like the way Chanyeol’s eyes squinted unevenly when he laughed, or the way his knee jiggled when he was nervous.

Basically, Sehun’s attraction was not going away, despite the forced professional distance between them. If anything, it was getting worse.

 

##################################################

 

“Huh,” Luhan said, as they got out of the car and walked towards the building. “This is swanky.”

Adjusting his scarf nervously, Sehun shivered into the December night air. “Jeeze, yeah,” he muttered, eyeballing the hotel as they approached. “I didn’t think we’d spent this kind of money on a company event.”

Luhan side-eyed him. “Listen to you, using the inclusive _we_ to talk about your employers,” he teased. “My little dongsaeng, so grown up.”

“You know, maybe you should just wait in the car,” Sehun shot back. “I didn’t _have_ to bring you tonight, you know.”

A wool-clad arm wound into Sehun’s elbow. “But I have to meet your coworkers! I’m the closest thing you have to a boyfriend, anyway.” He batted his eyelashes obnoxiously. “What do you think, should I hang all over you tonight? Maybe make a certain tall drink of confusing water a little _jealous_?”

Sehun reached over and flicked Luhan’s forehead, but he didn’t make him let go of his elbow. “Please, in the name of all that’s good and holy, _please_ do not do that,” he groaned. “We only just got things mostly un-awkward between us.” It had been almost two months since The Thing In The Conference Room and Sehun’s conversation with Baekhyun, and _finally_ he and Chanyeol had found their balance of friendship and work, their underlying attraction kept down to a low, manageable simmer. 

The older man was never far from Sehun’s thoughts, but at least it wasn’t keeping him up at night anymore.

The company’s holiday party was in one of the big ballrooms, on the third floor of the hotel, and walking out of the elevator, Sehun was suddenly very glad Luhan convinced him to dress _way_ up, in his nicest charcoal gray suit, shoes freshly shined and bleached hair swept up off his forehead the way Chanyeol had said looked good, that one time. Because everyone else dressed up, too, the women in pretty cocktail dresses and the men universally in suits, some of them _quite_ expensive-looking.

Once they were de-scarved and de-gloved and their coats were given to coat check, Sehun looked around until he spotted his department in the corner. “Come on,” he murmured, tugging on Luhan’s arm.

Minseok, Tao and Jongin were already seated together with their dates, and Sehun and Luhan took the last two chairs, filling the table out. It was so odd to see his usually barely-business-appropriate co-workers dressed to the nines; as introductions were made Sehun noticed Jongin’s shirt had french cuffs and Tao’s stud earrings looked like they might actually be diamond.

He also noticed the way Luhan held Jongin’s hand for a beat too long after shaking it, and considered whether he needed to kick Luhan or let it go. Jongin’s guest Taemin had been introduced as his best friend, not his boyfriend, and the uncharacteristic pinking of Jongin’s cheeks told Sehun maybe he should just pretend he hadn’t seen that.

He struck up a conversation with Tao’s girlfriend instead, a tall, stylish woman named Victoria, and within minutes they were laughing, mostly at Tao’s expense. Tao didn’t notice, too busy chatting with Minseok and his husband Yixing, who was also Chinese. This left Jongin to shyly ask Luhan how he and Sehun had met while his friend watched in amusement.

Victoria glanced over Sehun’s head, and in the next moment Sehun felt a gentle touch on his shoulder and turned to find Chanyeol standing slightly awkwardly behind him, with Baekhyun and a couple of other men who looked like guests. Immediately, Sehun got to his feet, turning to pull Chanyeol into a perfectly platonic one-armed hug.

Chanyeol grinned and returned the hug, squeezing Sehun tightly but letting go swiftly. “Hey,” he said, “I wanted to introduce you.”

So Sehun smiled and nodded his way through meeting Chanyeol’s best friend from university, Kris, a man even taller than Chanyeol and with a voice nearly as deep, and Baekhyun’s boyfriend, Jongdae. He barely saw them, too busy staring at Chanyeol, who looked utterly _stunning_ in that black suit. It really wasn’t anything that special, honestly, not compared to the one, say, Zitao was wearing, but it fit him perfectly and he was just. Just so darn _attractive_.

A prod in his side, and Sehun glanced over to see Luhan giving him a Look, and hurriedly introduced them. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Luhan said, because he was an asshole, and Chanyeol chuckled in a slightly puzzled-sounding way and glanced at Sehun, as if to ask _but why would you be telling your roommate about me?_

Baekhyun, who had been aimlessly gazing around the room, suddenly went wide-eyed and slapped Chanyeol’s thigh to get his attention. “Head’s up,” he hissed, his tone sharp and warning. 

They all looked, to see another pair of young men coming towards them, both dark-haired and slight, and neither of whom Sehun had ever met before.

Chanyeol went _white_.

Sehun, who was still standing right next to him, unconsciously raised a hand to the small of his back, suddenly concerned that he wouldn’t stay upright. Chanyeol looked like he was about to _pass out_. Sehun could feel him trembling.

“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun said, as the couple approached. “What are you doing here?” He glanced at Chanyeol as he said it, and then at Sehun, his eyes wide like he was trying to tell Sehun something, and - oh.

Oh.

_Right._

Sehun rubbed his hand across Chanyeol’s back slightly, willing him to breathe.

“That’s my fault, actually,” one of the men said cheerfully as they got close enough. “He’s here with me.”

“Whoa, really?” Baekhyun asked, because he seemed to be the only one besides Chanyeol with a clue what was going on, and Chanyeol seemed to be utterly non-verbal. “Are you two…?”

By this point, Sehun could see that the guests had all picked up that something was off, too; Jongdae looked concerned, Luhan intrigued, and Kris downright _thunderous_ , one foot stepping partway in front of Chanyeol as if to shield him. He must have known who Kyungsoo was, then. Sehun knew how he felt.

“Yeah,” the man said. “Just over a year now.” Chanyeol stiffened. The man who was speaking didn’t seem to notice, instead just reaching out to shake Baekhyun’s hand, and then Chanyeol’s. “Good to see you guys,” he said. “I don’t get up the fourth floor enough.” His eyes landed on Sehun, and he cocked his head. “Have we met? You look familiar.”

Chanyeol was still non-verbal, so Baekhyun stepped in. “This is Sehun, he’s the new guy on the help desk. Sehun, this is Kim Joonmyun, Vice President of Finance, and...Do Kyungsoo.”

Shit, Joonmyun was Chanyeol’s _boss._ No wonder Chanyeol was freaking out. Sehun shook both their hands as politely as he could manage, bowing his head to Joonmyun, who was young and handsome and wore that designer suit like he was born to do so.

Kyungsoo, on the other hand, was small-boned and pretty in a more ethereal way, big brown eyes and plush lips. He was gorgeous and he looked uncomfortable as fuck and Sehun couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes lingered on Sehun’s arm, where it disappeared behind Chanyeol’s back.

Sehun didn’t move. If anything, he stepped closer to Chanyeol, protective. Chanyeol didn’t seem to notice, but Kyungsoo definitely did.

In what Sehun could only assume was a calculated move, Baekhyun distracted Joonmyun by introducing Jongdae, and Kyungsoo took a very tentative step forward. “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

Chanyeol opened his mouth, and what came out was clearly supposed to be a word, but ended up being more of a choked-off squeak. He turned bright red, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I’ve been...good,” he said, in a much more normal tone. “Yeah, things have been pretty good. How...how about you?”

Kyungsoo’s relieved smile was heart-stoppingly pretty, and it wasn’t even a full smile. Swallowing, Sehun wondered how he’d _ever_ thought he had a chance with Chanyeol, if _this_ was Chanyeol’s ex. Because not only was he stunning, he was nothing at _all_ like Sehun. 

“Good,” Kyungsoo murmured. “Things are really good.” He bit his lip. It was unconsciously sensual and Sehun was in _pain_. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have...Joonmyun insisted I come, tonight. He, um. He wants to show me off, I think.” Kyungsoo made an aborted gesture with his left hand, stopping mid-motion as if thinking the better of it, and Sehun and Chanyeol both looked down at his hand at the same time.

There, twinkling in the classy mood lighting on his left ring finger, was an utterly stunning platinum band set with pave diamonds. It was very very clearly an engagement ring and Sehun’s heart dropped into his shoes.

Kyungsoo clearly knew he’d misstepped. He cleared his throat, and hurriedly asked, “What about you, are you seeing anyone?”

Chanyeol looked up at him, and in a flash of terrible understanding, Sehun realized that there was nothing Chanyeol wanted less at this moment than to have to tell his ex he was single. His mouth opened before he could think the better of it.

“Yeah, actually,” he said, raising his voice a little but keeping his tone casually light. He stepped just a little bit closer, closing the distance from ‘friend’ to ‘lover’. “We’re seeing each other.”

Sehun had kind of thought no one was paying attention to them anymore, but he heard a few surprised noises, and glanced around quickly to see that Baekhyun, Kris and Luhan were all staring. 

Shit. Oh well, too late now.

Chanyeol turned and blinked at him in surprise. Sehun pulled him a little closer, wrapping his arm around his waist, and said, “Come on, we can’t hide it from people forever.” 

He held Chanyeol’s gaze, until Chanyeol seemed to finally get it. Chanyeol let out a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess not,” he rumbled, playing along. Sehun saw shades of his Client Smile in the sheepish flash of teeth he aimed at Kyungsoo. “It’s...kind of new, still.”

Kyungsoo looked between them, and his smile widened into something a little more genuine. “That’s great,” he said, sounding _beyond_ relieved. “I’m really glad. I thought maybe you...Well, clearly I was mistaken. You two should come sit with us, we have a lot to catch up on.” 

Shit. Wait. No. Sehun opened his mouth to protest, and Chanyeol looked like he’d rather swallow snakes, but Baekhyun gave them both a little shove. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. You guys go, we’ll entertain your guests.” Sehun turned to him with panic in his eyes, but Baekhyun was giving him another one of those Pointed Looks. Unfortunately, Sehun didn’t actually know Baekhyun well enough to know what this particular look _meant_ , and it was too late anyway; Kyungsoo was getting Joonmyun’s attention and Baekhyun was leading Luhan and Kris away.

Luhan gave Sehun a look of his own, and Sehun _did_ know Luhan well enough to translate that one - _sucks to be you._

Right. Okay. He’d started this, and he was not about to let Chanyeol down. Flashing his most charming smile, Sehun wrapped his hand inside Chanyeol’s elbow and started walking, trailing behind the two dark-haired men.

Chanyeol leaned down. “I’m not sure if I should thank you or smack you,” he murmured, his deep voice a little strangled. “Are you _insane_?”

Sehun fluttered his eyelashes obnoxiously. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling,” he said sweetly. 

“I’m going to die tonight,” Chanyeol muttered. “I’m not going to make it. Tell my family I love them.”

His tone was humorous, but there was real nervousness behind it, and on a whim Sehun laced their fingers together and gave his hand a squeeze. “You’ll be fine,” he reassured Chanyeol. “We’ll stick around for a few minutes and make small talk, and then we’ll tell them we need to get back to our guests.” He flashed his sweetest, most innocent face, the one he used to make Luhan buy him things. “Just remember - you love me.”

“Right.” Chanyeol’s laugh was nearly as strangled as his whispering. “I love you.”

Sehun squeezed his hand, and ignored the way the words rang in his ears.


	4. Chapter 4

Small talk with Kyungsoo and Joonmyun was only a _tiny_ bit excruciating.

Sehun’s initial assessment that Kyungsoo was nothing like him was not far off. He was quiet where Sehun was loud, serious where Sehun was flippant, but when he spoke the table shut up and listened - and the table was all high-ranking company officers, VPs and higher. He looked at Joonmyun with love in his eyes, _real_ love, which made it hard to dislike him, but when he looked at Chanyeol the discomfort and guilt was obvious enough that Sehun decided he was going to dislike him just on principle.

The fact that Chanyeol turned into an awkward teenager around him didn’t really help, either. His former feelings were terribly obvious, though Sehun could see they’d soured over time, and there were too many moments where Kyungsoo would begin to say something, to ask something, and then cut himself off when Chanyeol cringed like a kicked puppy.

Chanyeol asked a few questions about Kyungsoo’s relationship with his boss, just simple things, like how long they’d been together exactly and how they met. The answers seemed to be upsetting him, and Sehun didn’t know why but it was clear Kyungsoo did, because he changed the subject, asking them about how _they_ had met.

Again, Chanyeol looked lost, so Sehun rescued him, telling an embellished version of the truth. About getting assigned Chanyeol’s ticket as his very first task as an employee, and about telling the rest of the department he’d take them from that point. (“I didn’t know that,” Chanyeol murmured in surprise. “I wondered why there was suddenly only one guy on the help desk.”) About getting to know one another, and about Chanyeol calling him the night before a big presentation for help.

“That was the turning point for us,” he said. “Or, well, for me, I guess. I knew I liked him after that.”

Chanyeol stared at him. Sehun ignored him and kept weaving his tale, talking about going out for beers, their connection, Chanyeol’s hesitancy. He skipped the makeout session, but made a point of Chanyeol being the one to walk away, watching Kyungsoo carefully for a reaction. There was _something_ in Kyungsoo’s eyes, but Sehun couldn’t read exactly _what_.

“Then, recently, we became closer and closer, until finally I asked him out.” Sehun smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “It was only...what, about two weeks ago now?” He looked to Chanyeol in mock-confirmation. Chanyeol gave him a helpless _what do you want me to say here?_ look, so Sehun turned back to the table. “Yeah, about two weeks.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re in different departments!” Joonmyun said cheerily.

Chanyeol blinked at him. “Why is that?”

“There’s a company policy against relationships between people in the same sectors of the company,” Kyungsoo explained, his voice soft. “That was why I left.”

Sehun stared, trying to remember the organizational tree. Right, as VP of Finance, Joonmyun had direct oversight of Billing, as well as Sales. He was Chanyeol’s boss now, but he would have also been Kyungsoo’s boss, at that time.

“ _That’s_ why you left?” Chanyeol said, sounding stunned. “Not because…”

Kyungsoo quickly shook his head, cutting Chanyeol off. Sehun suddenly wondered if Joonmyun even knew they had ever been a thing. “That’s the reason,” he assured Chanyeol. “The _only_ reason.”

Chanyeol sat back and was very quiet. _Uncharacteristically_ quiet. 

And Sehun didn’t know what was going through his head, but he could guess it wasn’t good. So he pushed his hand onto Chanyeol’s thigh, rubbing his thumb across the side of his knee in what he hoped was a comforting way.

Chanyeol didn’t outwardly respond, but a few moments later, a big hand snaked under the table and creeped over his, long fingers seeking out the spaces between his own. Sehun turned his hand over, and Chanyeol immediately entwined their hands and gave him a squeeze. It was a hard squeeze, desperate, and it didn’t feel like Chanyeol was offering comfort, so much as asking for it, _taking_ it.

Sehun let him squeeze, and ignored how the strength of his grip was making Sehun’s fingertips go numb. It seemed to be what he needed.

Conversation turned away from topics of romance and onto more banal subjects, and as the table cheerfully debated the merits of children learning instruments versus playing sports, it became easier to relax, to contribute to the conversation and to laugh. And that was when Sehun noticed something funny.

Acting like Chanyeol’s boyfriend was...not very difficult. It was, actually, shockingly easy to be touchy with him, to poke fun at him, to tease him one moment and defend him from others’ teasing in the next. At one point Chanyeol even finished one of his sentences for him, making them both burst out laughing, and Sehun used it as an excuse to drop his head onto Chanyeol’s shoulder, a gentle, playful little headbutt that had Chanyeol chuckling and mock-shoving him away before pulling him closer.

Joonmyun was watching them with the face one makes when watching a newborn puppy take its first steps. “You two are so sweet,” he said. “I’m really glad you’re together. From what I’ve heard, Chanyeol’s been single too long.”

Kyungsoo elbowed his fiance. “You’re being a gossip again, Joon,” he muttered. But then he turned to Chanyeol and Sehun, and his smile was just as fond. “He’s right, though. You seem to be really good together.” His eyes locked right onto Chanyeol’s. “I’m glad you found each other.”

Under the table, Chanyeol’s hand locked onto Sehun’s and squeezed, hard, _really_ hard. Sehun squeezed back, both to comfort and in self-defense, and he put on his most genuine smile and said, “Thank you. We really should...we have guests to get back to.”

Joonmyun protested and Kyungsoo shook both their hands warmly and then Sehun was getting up, dragging Chanyeol away.

“You okay?” he asked under his breath, the moment they were far enough away. 

“No,” Chanyeol breathed back, sounding shaken. “I’m not. Can we. Can we go...somewhere?”

Sehun took his hand and silently led him out through a side door, and onto a little balcony. It was cold out, too cold to be out there without overcoats for long. But as the door closed behind them, blocking out the sounds of the party and leaving them in the relative quiet of the December night, Chanyeol’s arm slid warmly around Sehun’s shoulders, and Sehun leaned gratefully into his heat.

“I’m sorry,” Sehun said. “I shouldn’t have...It was a stupid impulse. Now we have to hope Baekhyun or either of our guests didn’t go running their mouths.” He sighed. “I know my roommate knows it was an act, anyway.” But then he blinked. “At least, I _think_ he knows. Wait. Crap. I hope he doesn’t think I was actually _hiding_ this from him. He’d _kill_ me.”

Chanyeol glanced down at him. “Shit, I didn’t even think of that,” he moaned. “Kris would be pissed, too, if he thought…” He sighed. “Oh well. He knows my history with Soo, he’ll understand, I hope.” Dark eyes turned to Sehun, narrowing. “Which reminds me. How did _you_ know to come to my rescue like that?”

Oops. Right. Time to come clean. “Uh, well...Baekhyun has a big mouth?” Chanyeol snorted. “He didn’t...tell me anything specific. Just that there was a guy named Kyungsoo, and it ended badly, and you were...still recovering.” Sehun slipped his hand around Chanyeol’s waist. “I’m really sorry, it’s just...you looked so _panicked_. I don’t know if you realize how expressive your face is; every emotion you have is written all over it.”

“So you decided to fabricate a huge lie on the spot?” Chanyeol rumbled, part amused and part exasperated.

Sehun laughed. “I have never been accused of having good judgement,” he chuckled. “Or impulse control.” Shrugging, he said, “It worked out mostly okay, anyway. They seemed to believe us. I think...I kinda think Kyungsoo _needed_ to hear that you were okay.” He glanced up at Chanyeol, his brow furrowing. “Not that he should get what he wants, since it seems like he was a total dick to you.”

Chanyeol’s chuckle was confused, embarrassed, hesitant. “I thought I was the one who was a dick,” he admitted. “All this time, I thought I’d done something wrong, driven him away. Driven him to _leave his job._ ” He sighed heavily. “Now I find out I wasn’t the reason he left his job at all, and to be honest...I probably wasn’t the reason he left _me_ in the first place.”

Looking up at him in confusion, Sehun asked, “What do you mean?”

A flash of an unhappy smile. “The timing,” he explained. “Joonmyun said they’d been together just over a year, remember? Kyungsoo left me at the end of November last year.”

Shit. “So either he was cheating on you, or he left you and immediately hopped into bed with his boss.” Sehun tried to keep the snarl out of his voice, but he was pretty sure he failed.

“Knowing Soo,” Chanyeol muttered, “I don’t believe he would have cheated on me, not the way you mean. He probably pined silently for a while, settling for second-best, and then left me the moment he knew Joonmyun returned his affections.”

Sehun glared at nothing. “That doesn’t make it _better_.” 

“Actually, it kind of...does.” Chanyeol’s voice was rough, but there was a little note of hope that had Sehun turning his body to look fully into Chanyeol’s face. “Because,” Chanyeol explained, “it means he didn’t leave me because of something I did, or something I am, but because of something I’m _not_.” He quirked a smile. “I’m not Joonmyun, not by a long shot. Did you see how happy they were? If that’s what Kyungsoo wants, what he needs, then how can I blame him for going after it?” He took a deep breath. “I thought it was because I screwed up, but if this was the reason, then I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t...I didn’t drive him away.” Closing his eyes, he murmured, “It wasn’t my fault.”

Swallowing hard, Sehun wrapped his other arm around Chanyeol’s waist, pulling him fully into a tight hug. Long arms enfolded him and squeezed, and Chanyeol buried his face in the side of Sehun’s neck, taking long, shuddering breaths, like he was trying desperately not to cry.

“He’s an idiot,” Sehun whispered roughly. “No one in their right mind would throw you away like that.”

It startled a laugh out of Chanyeol. “If you say so,” he muttered. He drew back a little, raising his head, pulling himself together. His eyes were a little bit red, but dry. Sehun wrapped a hand around the side of his neck, his thumb absently stroking over the edge of Chanyeol’s jaw. They gazed at one another for a long moment. 

This time, Sehun saw it coming. He saw the affection in Chanyeol’s eyes, the thankfulness, and he saw him begin to lean down, his eyes fluttering shut. 

And in an act of supreme will, he tightened his grip and stopped Chanyeol mid-movement.

“Don’t,” he said roughly, hating it. “Don’t do it if you’re only going to pull away again.”

Chanyeol froze, and stared at him. Sehun flashed him a smile that came out a lot weaker than he would have hoped. “Come on, let’s get back to the table,” he murmured. “It’s cold out here.”

 

##################################################

 

It turned out that Baekhyun, Luhan, and Kris had collectively figured out that Sehun’s declaration of his relationship with Chanyeol was a lie. That didn’t stop them from being total dicks about it when Sehun and Chanyeol finally returned, making kissyfaces at them and teasing them mercilessly about _when’s the wedding, where’s the ring, what are you gonna name your kids._

Sehun gave it back as good as he got, defending them both because Chanyeol was being uncharacteristically quiet and pensive. Baekhyun had somehow convinced the group to drag two tables together, so that corner of the room was by far the noisiest, with the entire help desk, half of Implementation and all their dates and guests crowded around it, eating and drinking and talking. Chanyeol’s silence seemed to go unnoticed in the hubbub, except by Sehun, who had several ideas of why it might be and planned to leave him alone until he was ready.

Luhan was still busy hitting on Jongin - they’d migrated to the other side of the table, somehow, and were having a low conversation with a lot of smiling and giggling, words indiscernible from here - so Sehun ended up falling into conversation with Kris, of all people. He was a pretty cool dude, the calm to Chanyeol’s usual whirlwind, and it was clear to Sehun that they were very, very close.

At one point, when Baekhyun had managed to draw Chanyeol into a conversation, Kris leaned over and murmured, “Look, I have to tell you. Jumping in to rescue Yeol’s ass, that was a ballsy move. Thanks.” Sehun laughed and shrugged, but then Kris’s face turned serious, and Sehun’s laughter died. “But here’s the thing,” he said. “Yeol talks about you a lot. I think he likes you more than even _he_ realizes. But he’s been really fragile lately. So if you fuck with him, I will hunt you down, and I will make your life living hell.” A thick eyebrow arched meaningfully. “Get me?”

“Loud and clear,” Sehun assured him quickly. Yeesh. “I’m not planning to hurt him. We aren’t...It isn’t an issue.”

Kris snorted. “Sure it isn’t. And just remember - Kyungsoo didn’t _plan_ to hurt him, either.”

He drew away, striking up a conversation with Tao and his girlfriend, and leaving Sehun to think. And over the course of the next hour or so, Sehun thought about a lot of things.

Sehun thought about how protective he’d felt of Chanyeol when Kyungsoo first walked up, how he’d been ready to jump in front of him, defend him. How his reaction had mirrored Kris’s, despite the fact that Kris had known Chanyeol for close to a decade, and Sehun had known him barely four months.

He thought about how easy it was, being Chanyeol’s “boyfriend”. How it didn’t really even require any effort on his part - just _not_ stopping himself from acting on his usual impulses to touch, to laugh, to smile at every little cute thing Chanyeol did.

He thought about the way Chanyeol had purposely sought out his company at the beginning of the night, and instinctively sought out his comfort when upset. How he’d asked Sehun to take him away when he needed to be alone, instead of just escaping himself.

Sehun watched Chanyeol as the older man started to relax, his mood brightening again as the table laughed and joked, and thought about a lot of things.

 

##################################################

 

Around 11 PM, when the party was winding down, Luhan dragged Sehun to the side.

“I’m taking Jongin out for another drink,” he informed him. “Can you find another ride home?”

Damn, he worked fast. “I’ll ask around,” Sehun assured him. “I’ll take a cab if I have to. Far be it for me to come between you and your dick.”

Luhan reached up to ruffle his carefully styled hair; Sehun blocked his hand before it could make contact, glaring. “Thanks, Hunnie,” Luhan said sweetly, and practically skipped away.

Sehun turned, and found Chanyeol and Kris watching him in bewildered amusement. “What was that about?” Chanyeol asked.

“He abandoned me,” Sehun said, making it overdramatic and humorously put-upon. “Left me all alone in the cold, like an unwanted puppy on Christmas.”

“Aww,” Chanyeol cooed, playing along. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you home.” He reached up and mimed scratching behind Sehun’s ear.

Sehun pawed at him to knock his hand away and tried to keep his face from going scarlet. Chanyeol didn’t even seem to _notice_ the possible double entendre there.

“Dog jokes aside, I do actually need a ride now,” Sehun said. His voice was kind of gruff; he cleared his throat. “If you’re, uh, going my way?”

“Sure,” Chanyeol said easily. “Where do you live?”

Sehun told him, and Chanyeol looked it up on his phone as they were walking to coat check. Distracted, he nearly walked directly into the service desk; Sehun reached out to stop him but Kris, clearly well-used to this, was faster, pulling Chanyeol up short with a hand on his arm. Chanyeol didn’t even notice Sehun reaching out to him, but Kris did, and shot him a look, part amused and part exasperated.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, as if nothing had happened. “That’s right on my way home from Kris’s. Cool, that’ll be easy.” 

They got their coats and headed out into the night. Chanyeol’s dark blue four-door brought back memories that Sehun quickly squashed; he hadn’t been in that car since the first night Chanyeol pushed him away. He slid into the back seat as Kris and Chanyeol got in the front; Chanyeol started the engine and blasted the heater as Kris fiddled with the radio, and then they were off.

Kris’s discerning taste in pop radio - he flipped through at least six stations before settling - sparked a conversation about music, a conversation from which Chanyeol was conspicuously absent. It was a little worrisome; Chanyeol usually jumped on anything having to do with music. Sehun hoped he wasn’t still brooding over seeing Kyungsoo tonight, but knew that was probably exactly what he was thinking about.

Kris lived in the city, unlike Sehun, so it wasn’t long until he was saying his goodnights and getting out of the car. It was awkward to be sitting in the back while Chanyeol was in the front, so Sehun switched to the passenger seat while Chanyeol put Sehun’s address in his GPS. 

The first half of the ride was quiet, nothing but the radio and the hum of the heater, but as Chanyeol got off the highway and started into the suburbs, he made a small, decisive noise.

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” he said.

Sehun looked up at him. His eyes were on the road, not looking at Sehun. “Thank me for what?” Sehun asked.

A shrug. “For jumping to my rescue. For playing along, going with me to the other table. For...I don’t know. Holding my hand, I guess.” He sighed. “It would have sucked a lot harder if you hadn’t been there.” Dark eyes glanced over before returning to the road. “So...thanks. Really.”

Feeling warm, Sehun smiled and reached out to turn down the blasting heater. “No problem,” he murmured. “I’m sure you would have done the same for me.”

“Hah.” Chanyeol’s grip on the wheel tightened. “I’d like to think so, but the truth is, I’m kind of chickenshit.” He glanced over again. “You’ve got brass balls, Sehun. I can only aspire to be that brave.”

Sehun stared at him. “Uh...thanks, I think?”

“It was a compliment,” Chanyeol muttered. “Look, are you up for hanging out some more? I...don’t really want to go home yet. Wanna go grab a beer or something?”

His heart jumping oddly, Sehun said, “Sure, sounds good.” Chanyeol made a satisfied noise and quickly changed lanes, turning right as his GPS admonished him to turn left. “Are you...look, I’m sorry if this is nosy, but are you still freaking out over Kyungsoo?”

Chanyeol shot him a tight grin. “Kind of,” he admitted. “I’m just...I can’t get my brain to shut up. If I went home right now I’d just sit alone and brood.”

Yeah, that was what Sehun had figured. “Well, I guess I’m coming to your rescue one more time tonight, then.”

A big hand slid over Sehun’s knee and squeezed briefly. “Thanks,” Chanyeol murmured.

Sehun tried not to read too much into either the soft, grateful tone of his voice, or the warmth of his hand. By this point, he knew better.

They ended finding a hole-in-the-wall neighborhood pub, the kind filled with older dudes avoiding their wives and university kids just returned home for the holidays. It was dark and warm and abuzz with chatter without being too loud, and the booth where they sat was high-backed and cozy.

True to his word, Chanyeol ordered for the table, asking the waiter to start a tab. The waiter - a man maybe about Chanyeol’s age, shorter but well-built and quite handsome - winked at them both as he walked away.

Great. He probably thought they were together.

And Chanyeol was not helping dissuade the illusion, either, what with leaning over the table to converse with Sehun in low tones, his long legs stretched out and tangling with Sehun’s, the way he laughed at everything Sehun said that was even remotely funny and the way his eyes stayed locked unnervingly on Sehun’s face.

If Sehun hadn’t known better, he would have thought Chanyeol was _flirting_. But every time the thought crossed his mind, he squashed it. Chanyeol had made his stance on the subject more than clear and Sehun wasn’t planning to beat a dead horse. Their friendship was important to him - he wasn’t about to drive Chanyeol away again.

It was probably just the alcohol making Chanyeol so glowy-eyed and touchy, anyway. Probably just residual thankful feelings for Sehun’s actions earlier that night, or maybe even nostalgia for his lost relationship with Kyungsoo. Who knew. In any case, Sehun certainly enjoyed the attention, even as he tried not to read too far into it. The center of Chanyeol’s attention was a nice place to be.

Chanyeol signalled for a second round, and when the waiter set down new beers, he very definitely smiled a little too much at Sehun, leaned a little too close and gave him some hooded flirt-eyes. So he probably _didn’t_ think they were together then, which was a relief. And hey, he was cute, so Sehun played along, grinning back and eyeing the man suggestively, watching his cute little ass twitch as he walked away.

He looked back up to see Chanyeol watching him. “What?”

Chanyeol’s expression was unusually closed-off, unreadable. “You really do just go for it when you see something you want, don’t you?” he observed.

“Well, yeah,” Sehun agreed. “I mean, what if I lose out because I never take a chance?” He indicated Sassy-Butt-Waiter with a lazy gesture of his fingers. “That dude over there could be my soulmate, but how would I ever know if I didn’t flirt with him tonight? Maybe I’ll ask him out or something.” He watched the man in question work behind the bar, helping the bartender in between serving customers. The waiter caught him watching and shot him a handsome smile, his eyes dropping, half flirtatious and half flustered. Promising.

He looked back, and found Chanyeol frowning at him. “But you know nothing about him,” Chanyeol pointed out.

Sehun blinked, and shrugged. “Well, yeah, but how can I hope to get to know anyone if I don’t give people a chance to show me who they are?”

Chanyeol sat back and was quiet for a bit, seemingly digesting that. Sehun drank his beer and tried not to stare too much at the waiter. It had been a while since he’d had a fling, and the guy looked like he’d be up for it.

It would take his mind off of things, anyway.

Clearly, the waiter was thinking the same thing, because after Chanyeol paid and he brought the credit card and receipt back to the table, there was a little piece of register paper tucked behind the card. Sehun plucked it from Chanyeol’s hands. Sure enough, scrawled on the paper was a name - Donghae - and a phone number.

“Sweet,” he muttered. He caught the waiter’s eye and made a show of tucking the little slip of paper into his own wallet. “See? Sometimes you just need to take a chance.”

Chanyeol didn’t answer him.

Sehun didn’t think much of it, at first, but then Chanyeol was still quiet on the ride home, and Sehun figured he’d screwed up again, said something to push Chanyeol away. He was still trying to decipher exactly _what_ he’d said when Chanyeol pulled into the parking lot of his building.

He’d expected that Chanyeol would just pull into the driveway, drop him off, because, well, what else was he going to do? But to his surprise, Chanyeol pulled all the way in and parked in a parking spot.

“Um,” Sehun murmured. “Good night, I guess?”

Chanyeol looked up at Sehun. “Don’t call him,” he blurted out.

Sehun blinked at him. “What?”

“The waiter guy. He gave you his number, right? Don’t call him.”

Something about the fervor in Chanyeol’s voice was setting off alarm bells. Sehun wanted to get annoyed but frankly the urgency was so out of character that he found he couldn’t.

“Okay…” he said slowly, cautiously. “Why not?”

Chanyeol turned his torso in his seat, one hand gripping the back, took a deep breath, and met Sehun’s eyes. “Because I’m done being chickenshit,” he said.

He reached out and pulled Sehun across the gear shift, into a hard kiss.

Caught off-guard, Sehun froze. He didn’t kiss back, but he didn’t pull away, either, and within a few seconds Chanyeol let him go, pulling back enough to look into Sehun’s eyes.

“Okay,” Sehun said, “what the _fuck_.”

Chanyeol exhaled through a humorless smile, a shadow of a laugh. “I deserve that, I think,” he murmured. “I’ve been terrible.”

Narrowing his eyes, Sehun ignored his rabbiting heartbeat and said, “You’re being fucking _confusing_.”

“Yes. Right. Okay. Let me explain, then.” Chanyeol squared his shoulders, set his jaw. “I like you a lot. I’ve liked you for a really long time, honestly. And I’m sorry I let my past and my personal issues get in the way.”

Sehun drew in a shocked breath. Chanyeol kept talking, his words flowing faster and faster.

“I should have just let this happen - whatever _this_ is - I should have just let it happen weeks ago, when we kissed the first time. I was just. I was _scared_. And I kept pushing you away but you’re right, you’re fucking _right_ , how the hell am I ever going to move on if I never let anyone get close?” He blew out a breath. “It’s amazing you’ve even stood by me this far. Like I can still barely believe, after the shit I put you through, that you still jumped to my rescue tonight. But then, the waiter, and like, you were _flirting_ with him, and I know you were because you used to look at _me_ like that, and it just, it hit me that I could lose my chance with you, _really_ lose it, like for _good_ , if I didn’t do something. So. This is me. Doing something.” His eyes were dark and kind of wild, _frantic_ really, and Sehun was starting to get a little bit alarmed at his fervency. “Don’t call that guy. I don’t want him to be your _soulmate_ or whatever. I want - ”

He stopped dead, snapping his mouth shut, and his cheeks went bright red, and...oh.

Really?

No, that couldn’t be right.

“You want what?” Sehun asked. Chanyeol’s eyes widened, but no, he was _not_ getting off the hook on this one. “You want _what_ , Chanyeol? Spell it out for me because I am _not_ playing guessing games with -”

“I want _you_.” Chanyeol cut him off. “Point blank. The end. I want...I want the way we were tonight to not have been an act. I want you to someday say you took a chance on _me_ and found your soulmate.” 

Sehun stared at him in shock.

“You had better really mean that,” he said breathlessly. “If you’re fucking with me, I swear…”

Chanyeol shook his head quickly. “I mean it. I do.” He bit his lip. “Please give me a chance?”

Shit. What if Chanyeol was just...what if that was the alcohol talking, or his stress over Kyungsoo? 

Even though...he wasn’t actually drunk. He was sober enough to drive, and he’d barely mentioned Kyungsoo for hours, and...what if he really did mean it? 

How could Sehun pass up the chance to find out?

“Pick me up at six tomorrow,” Sehun challenged.

Chanyeol’s eyes widened. “Does that mean - ”

“It means I’m giving you a chance.” Sehun smiled, and Chanyeol grinned helplessly back, looking absolutely over the _moon_ to hear that. “No hard feelings if you change your mind, but no second chances either, okay? I can’t keep doing the yo-yo thing.”

“Yes. Absolutely. I totally understand.” His face was very, _very_ earnest, and Sehun felt his resolve melting. “You won’t regret this.” And then, he blinked, and he seemed to just then realize what Sehun had actually said. “Six? Tomorrow? ...Dinner?”

 _Adorable._ “Yeah, dinner. Someplace nice. I like that suit on you, I want to see it again.” He winked.

Chanyeol blew out a deep breath. “Okay. I can do that. I think I know just the place.” He glanced up at the apartment building, then back to Sehun. “I guess...I’ll see you tomorrow?”

It was probably dumb of him, but Sehun gave into impulse and leaned over the console to press a kiss to Chanyeol’s lips. Chanyeol made a small noise and pressed back, cupping Sehun’s shoulder.

Sehun broke away and smiled. “It’s a date.”

 

##################################################

 

Monday morning saw Sehun floating on cloud nine, humming cheerfully - if rather tunelessly - as he rearranged his desk and prepped his to-do list for the week. So elated was he that it didn’t even occur to him to be worried when Minseok stuck his head out of his office and called his name.

“What’s up?” he asked, as he sat opposite Minseok’s desk.

Minseok raised an eyebrow. “I just received an email from Park Chanyeol in Sales,” he said. “Asking me to make sure his tickets were never passed to you again. Want to explain to me why?”

Sehun blinked, and for a moment, panicked. Then, the conversation he and Chanyeol had had the night before - snuggled under a blanket on Sehun’s couch, filled with junky takeout and anticipation for the future ahead of them - and his panic was abruptly replaced with a surge of fondness that was quickly becoming commonplace.

“We thought it would be best,” he explained. “Since there’s a company policy against people in relationships working together.”

Minseok’s eyebrows hit the roof. “Wait,” he said, “really? I thought you guys said that was an act for Park’s ex.”

Sehun shrugged and tried not to let his grin betray him too much.

“Huh.” Minseok considered his computer screen, probably reading the email again, and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Well, request denied.” He glanced over at Sehun’s surprised face. “No one else can handle his issues. The policy’s only against people in the same department, so you’re stuck with him.” With a smile, he added, “Just try to keep it professional when you’re in the building, okay?” 

Sehun lit up like the Christmas tree in the lobby upstairs. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

“Good. Now. This purchase memo you did on Friday.” He picked up the memo in question and waved it. “Please explain to me why you really think it’s necessary to purchase Surface tablets for the entire help desk.”

Sehun launched into his argument.

Half an hour later, having successfully convinced Minseok of his point of view and somehow even more elated than before, Sehun returned to his desk and, out of habit, opened his email. And wouldn’t you know, the first thing that came up was a ticket, sent to the help desk and forwarded to him by Tao, with a little note asking why Chanyeol didn’t just do what he always did and call Sehun first.

Grinning, Sehun picked up the phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So technically, this is the end! The next chapter is an outtake - NC-17, if you're sensitive about that kind of thing.


	5. OUTTAKE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cut scene from K.I.S.S. - takes place between the second-to-last and last scenes of the story. Can be taken as canon or not, as you see fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** explicit sex, explicit stupidity, gross snuggling, like two lines of dirty talk.

Chanyeol was exactly on time, dressed in the same sexy black suit, but with a deep jade-green shirt under it this time. The restaurant was high-end, the food was delicious, Chanyeol paid - and moreover, Sehun had _fun_. At the beginning of the night, it was clear Chanyeol was nervous, but that cleared up somewhere around the time they got their drinks and then it was just laughing and flirting and enjoying each other’s company.

It was nice, seeing Chanyeol let go, not hold himself back, not hide his attraction. It made Sehun feel like the center of Chanyeol’s world.

Dinner came to an end too quickly, and the ride home was quicker still. Sehun didn’t want Chanyeol to leave, but with things the way they had been, he was hesitant to push for more, for fear of scaring Chanyeol away again.

But when Chanyeol pulled into his apartment building’s lot and parked, Sehun could see that he was as reluctant to leave as Sehun was for him to go, and Sehun’s resolve wavered. Would it really matter, if Sehun asked Chanyeol to stay? 

“So,” Chanyeol said. “I guess I’ll...see you on Monday?”

Sehun opened his mouth, but at that moment his pocket beeped loudly, startling them both. Not having an immediate answer, Sehun used it as an excuse, digging the phone out of his pocket and unlocking it. It was a text.

**Luhan  
Don’t expect me home tonight, kekeke~~**

Oh.

Well.

Sehun looked back up at Chanyeol. “Want to come inside?” he asked impulsively. Chanyeol stared at him in shock, and Sehun suddenly feared he’d misstepped, that this was too far, too fast, too soon. Quickly, he added, “I mean, you don’t have to come in, it’s not...you know. A _condition_ of anything. But.” He eyed Chanyeol up and down. “I wouldn’t mind peeling you out of that suit.” He was aiming for flirtatious humor, but he meant it, too.

Chanyeol broke into startled laughter. “Brass balls,” he said again, his tone fond. “Yeah, okay. I’ll come in, if you want me to.”

And he did exactly that, following Sehun out of the car and into the building.

Nerves didn’t hit Sehun until he was unlocking the door to his apartment, but when they did, they hit hard enough that he nearly dropped his keys. He laughed a little at himself, taking a deep breath and steadying his hand, and tried again.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said softly as the door opened. “Luhan’s kind of a slob.”

Chanyeol looked around and laughed. “If you think this is messy, I dread to find out what you’ll say when you see my place.”

Sehun tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Was that an invitation?” he asked playfully. 

Stopping with his arms half out of his overcoat, Chanyeol studied him steadily. “If you want it to be,” he murmured.

Dropping his eyes, Sehun cleared his throat and tried not to smile too widely. “Um,” he muttered, “do you want a cup of coffee, or something?”

“Sehun.” Sehun looked up. Chanyeol had dropped his coat on the hook, and stood in Sehun’s living room in that slim-cut black suit, hands in his pockets, looking awkward and gorgeous and oh shit, this was really happening, Sehun could _have_ that.

“Sorry,” Sehun said, shaking himself and coming back over to Chanyeol again. “I’m nervous, for some weird reason.”

Chanyeol smiled at him, crooked and fond. “You are the only person I know who would just come out and say that.” A big hand came up to the back of his neck, scratching at his hairline. “I am too, so you’re in good company.”

Sehun stopped in front of him and reached out to take his free hand. “No coffee, then?” he asked, his voice going low and soft. 

Squeezing his hand, Chanyeol met Sehun’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have caffeine this late anyway,” he said, and his own voice was just as low, gruff. “I won’t sleep.”

Sehun raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t really planning on _sleeping_ right now.”

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. And when Sehun saw Chanyeol’s eyes start to close, his balance start to tip forward, he tipped up his chin and met Chanyeol halfway.

This time, the kiss wasn’t frantic, pent-up frustration exploding uncontrollably, but it wasn’t restrained, either. It was warm and passionate and ramped up at a steady pace, and within a startling short amount of time Sehun was panting into Chanyeol’s mouth, both their suit jackets on the floor, tugging at the knot of Chanyeol’s tie while Chanyeol worked the buttons of Sehun’s shirt open.

“Bedroom?” Chanyeol suggested, his voice deep as a well. 

Sehun shuddered, fisted a hand in his loosened tie, and tugged him down the hall. “I thought you’d never ask.”

It wasn’t a big apartment, so it wasn’t a long trip to the bedroom. Sehun let go of Chanyeol to turn on his bedside lamp, the golden glow of the incandescent bulb much more flattering than the harsh overhead light, and surreptitiously glanced at his nightstand shelf to make sure the lube and condoms were still stocked. It had been a while.

A big hand cupped Sehun’s ass through his suit pants, sliding warmly over the curve and squeezing. Sehun straightened up and threw a grin over his shoulder - which faded in the face of the dark lust in Chanyeol’s eyes. 

Shit, that was... _wow_.

Sehun turned back around, stepping into Chanyeol’s arms, pressing himself right against Chanyeol’s long body. He fit there so nicely, and Chanyeol’s arms enveloped him so completely, and this was….A dream come true, really.

The thick, growing cock brushing Sehun’s thigh was, too.

Sehun melted against Chanyeol’s body, keeping himself tucked to one side so he could finish undoing Chanyeol’s tie, start working on Chanyeol’s shirt. Just being close enough to smell Chanyeol’s cologne had him swelling, hardening; he swallowed down a burst of arousal and shifted his hips purposely, hoping to draw Chanyeol’s attention down.

It worked. Chanyeol made a low noise of appreciation and dropped one hand, long fingers trailing gently up the ridge. The bare touch set Sehun’s nerves on fire, and he gasped, his fingers stilling with a button half-undone. He canted his hips up, seeking out more friction, a firmer touch, but Chanyeol chuckled under his breath and pulled away, starting work again on Sehun’s own half-buttoned shirt.

Sehun retaliated by stepping closer, straddling Chanyeol’s long, sleek thigh and pushing his own into Chanyeol’s bulge. He leaned up and attached his lips to Chanyeol’s neck, rocking his hips gently and finishing unbuttoning Chanyeol’s shirt at the same time, and Chanyeol’s low groan, his cock hardening further against Sehun’s hip had Sehun moaning appreciatively in response.

Both shirts came off at about the same time. Sehun’s undershirt was a plain one, scoopneck with sleeves, old and worn enough to be soft and clingy, but Chanyeol’s was a-line, sleeveless, and Sehun couldn’t resist cupping his bare shoulders in both hands and sliding down his arms, thumbs tracing out the hard arch of his biceps. “You’re so fucking _hot_ ,” he whined breathlessly. “It isn’t _fair_.”

Chanyeol’s chuckle warmed his ear, the side of his face. “Look who’s talking,” he muttered. “Do you even _know_ how many times I had to excuse myself to the bathroom after seeing you? Particularly in those khakis you have. I don’t know where you got them but please buy six pairs because your ass is a fucking wet dream in those.” 

Hah. “I thought I caught you staring once or twice,” Sehun murmured, letting his hands come to rest in the crooks of Chanyeol’s elbows. It was a nice spot, the skin warm and smooth and the muscle curved to fill his palms. He thought he might stay here for a bit before moving on. 

“You fucking _waved_ it at me, don’t even try to deny it,” Chanyeol growled, tone playful but lust-filled. “I know better than to think you’re unaware of your _attributes_.” Both hands slid down, wrapping around Sehun’s ass and tugging him closer. “And of course it feels even better than it looks, I’m not even surprised.” He took a deep breath, shuddering. “Please tell me you bottom,” he murmured. “I would die happy.”

“Fuck,” Sehun breathed, surprised by the boldness. “Yes. Oh shit, yes, _fuck me. Please._ ”

Chanyeol groaned, low and needy. “Tonight? You’re sure?”

Sehun glanced down at the lump in the front of Chanyeol’s pants and held back a moan. “Why, is four months of foreplay not enough for you?” he muttered. Startled, Chanyeol laughed, and Sehun pulled back enough to yank off his undershirt and drop to his knees. “Fine, if you need more,” he said, and reached for Chanyeol’s belt buckle.

Chanyeol instantly stopped laughing, his eyes going wide. He watched, frozen in place, as Sehun pulled open his belt, unzipped his pants, and drew them down his legs. He sank all the way down, digging his fingers into the bands of Chanyeol’s socks as he passed. With a little encouragement, Chanyeol stepped out of slacks and socks at the same time, leaving him in his white undershirt and black boxer-briefs, soft and tightly molded to lean thighs, to the extraordinarily obvious bulge of his cock.

From down on the floor, Chanyeol _towered_ over Sehun, the angle gorgeous and almost majestic. Heart pounding, Sehun decided Chanyeol needed to know how committed he was to this, that it wasn’t just the sex, so he started down at the top of Chanyeol’s foot and laid soft, wet kisses in a meandering line, over his instep, against his ankle, up a firm and slightly hairy shin to the knee. One kiss on each side of the kneecap, and Sehun rose up a little more to start the long, slow journey up his lean thigh, paying more and more attention to each new spot as the skin got softer and more sensitive. Chanyeol hadn’t made a sound, but his muscles had all gone tense, trembling. Sehun wrapped an arm around the backs of his thighs to steady him, and with the other hand pushed the bottom hem of the boxers up to get at skin more sensitive still, up nearly all the way to the hipbone and then trailing back down and in. He found a spot that made a high, soft sound emanate from above him, right at the crease where the biggest muscle of the thigh began, and sucked lightly, gently working what he intended to be a dark, long-lasting hickey into the skin.

When Chanyeol was trembling so hard Sehun was actually afraid he might collapse, he pulled back, resting his head against Chanyeol’s hip and looking up at him. “Is that enough foreplay,” he asked, “or would you like me to suck you off, too?”

With his face a hand’s-breadth from Chanyeol’s cock, the heavy jerk and pulse of wet that resulted from his words was impossible to miss. “Next time,” Chanyeol promised, his voice dropping down to a low growl. “Fuck yes, next time. Right now, I want to be inside you.” His inhale was shuddery. “Can I?”

It was sweet, that he still felt the need to ask. “Please,” Sehun said, getting to his feet. He tugged at the hem of Chanyeol’s undershirt, and obligingly, Chanyeol pulled it off over his head. Ugh, he was so beautiful, Sehun was in _heaven_. Sehun reached under the nightstand and pulled out the half-used bottle of lube and a condom, setting them on top of the nightstand for easy access.

“You’re always so prepared,” Chanyeol murmured, pulling him close and pressing a kiss to his jaw. Sehun made a low noise, revelling in the feeling of bare skin on skin. “How do you want me?”

What a question. “In every position possible,” Sehun breathed back. “I’m not picky, and we’ve got time, right?” He glanced up at Chanyeol’s face, smiling tentatively and receiving a smile and a nod in return. “Tonight you’re my guest, so you choose.”

Sehun had time to see a flash of wicked humor in Chanyeol’s eyes before he bent, arms wrapping around the backs of Sehun’s thighs, and lifted. With an undignified squawk, Sehun found himself upended, falling heavily on his back on the bed. He bounced, and with the breath knocked out of him, could only stare at the ceiling and gasp for a moment. In the next, he felt hands at his waist, pushing up the hem of his shirt and tugging at his belt at the same time.

He refocused in time to see Chanyeol yank his belt open and start pulling off his slacks. “Are you always so impatient?” Sehun gasped, hurrying to pull his undershirt off.

“Only after four months of foreplay,” Chanyeol shot back as he divested Sehun of his trousers and socks. Left only in his underwear - a rather small pair of dark red designer briefs, the only ones he owned that didn’t leave some kind of line in the soft suit pants - Sehun propped himself up on his elbows and looked up at Chanyeol, who had frozen. 

“What?”

Dark eyes narrowed. “Turn over,” Chanyeol ordered. “Hands and knees.”

 _Shit._ The command in Chanyeol’s voice had Sehun’s heart bouncing around crazily in his ribcage. He hurried to do as he was told, flipping onto his front and getting up onto his hands and knees. He expected to feel big hands on him immediately, but a few moments passed with no sound, no touch. Sehun glanced back over his shoulder.

Chanyeol was just...staring. Just staring at his ass in those little red briefs. 

Sehun arched his back and wiggled his ass a little. “So are you just going to look, or...?”

“Shush,” Chanyeol said, not moving from where he stood. “I’m having a moment here.” He didn’t look away, his head cocking to the side slightly, like he was really contemplating every line of the view in front of him.

Sehun wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or annoyed. He settled on impatient. Hoping to get a reaction, Sehun dropped down to his elbows and spread his thighs, just like he had on that late night under Chanyeol’s desk. Only this time, he was hard, so the underside of his bulge was even more lewd and obvious, and in case Chanyeol didn’t get the hint from _that_ , Sehun reached down and palmed himself, letting his fingers slide low enough that Chanyeol could see them peeking from between his thighs.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol breathed, and that did the trick, his hands were on Sehun’s body and Sehun let his own drop back down, huffing a laugh and pushing eagerly into Chanyeol’s touch. “You’re the _worst._ ”

“Don’t act like you don’t love it,” Sehun accused. The bed dipped as Chanyeol climbed onto it behind him, the pads of his fingers dipping into the edges of Sehun’s briefs and stroking the skin before pulling them off entirely. Sehun squirmed a little and kicked them off. “Get naked, come on, I want your damn cock.”

“Such a sweet-talker.” Chanyeol’s hand connected with Sehun’s bare ass, probably meant as a slap, but it ended up being more of a caress, really. “I mean, that’s _poetry._ ”

“Dick.”

“Was that an insult, or a demand?”

“A demand. Dick. Give me it. _I want your dick._ ” Sehun looked back over his shoulder again, and found Chanyeol biting his lip to hold back laughter. “Chan _yeol_ ,” he whined.

Chanyeol reached out a long arm and snagged the lube from the bedside table. “So needy,” he murmured, pushing his own boxers down. The cock Sehun had been panting after sprang free, every bit as long and thick and gorgeous as he’d imagined, and Sehun didn’t bother covering his moan of appreciation. Kicking that last piece of clothing away, Chanyeol waggled his eyebrows at Sehun and upended the lube over his hand. “I should drag this out for hours just to teach you a lesson.”

Sehun eyed Chanyeol’s cock, already very, very hard, a glimmer of wet at the tip. “You really think you’d last that long?”

Capping the bottle and tossing it on the bed, Chanyeol wiggled lubey fingers at him. “You wanna find out?” he murmured, his deep voice dripping innuendo.

Damn, that sounded promising. “Not tonight,” Sehun said. “But another time, yeah. I’m up for just about anything.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Chanyeol caressed Sehun’s hip with his non-lubed hand, kneading strong fingers into his ass. “If you’re half as good in bed as your flirting promises, you’re gonna ruin me for anyone else.”

“ _Good,_ ” Sehun said, surprising himself with the fierceness in his tone.

Chanyeol stopped, and looked at him, and for a moment Sehun completely forgot his compromising position and only saw the uncertainty in Chanyeol’s eyes, the disbelief, the hesitant hope.

Then cool, wet fingers touched him, and Sehun gasped, his head dropping.

Chanyeol poked around a little bit, teasing at Sehun’s skin, before a single digit slid carefully inside. Sehun moaned softly as Chanyeol pumped the finger into him a few times, then added a second.

“You feel like you do this regularly,” Chanyeol said, his voice as soft as his touch. There was an unspoken question behind his words - _who else?_

“Yeah,” Sehun replied, breathless. “You should see my toybox.” _No one but you._

“Oh. Hmm, I see.” Thick fingers rotated, pressing slightly apart, and Sehun groaned at the shocking gorgeousness of the feeling, dropping his head on his forearms. “You don’t have anything too impressive in there, do you? I would hate to not measure up.”

Sehun decided not to tell him about the _really_ big one. He’d only ever used it once, anyway; there _was_ such a thing as too much. “Toys don’t have a voice that grabs me by the nuts,” Sehun shot back. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Weight shifted, and warmth settled over Sehun’s back. Chanyeol’s free hand came down onto the bed outside of Sehun’s shoulder, his body hovering over Sehun’s, skin just barely brushing skin.

“You like my voice?” Chanyeol asked, his mouth somewhere around Sehun’s scapula and his timbre purposely deep. 

Shuddering, Sehun rocked back as far as he could, begging without words for Chanyeol’s hand. “Fell in love with it when I first heard it,” he admitted. 

“I wondered why you called me so much,” Chanyeol murmured, thinking aloud. “Before you, I mostly dealt with the help desk via email.” He added a third finger abruptly, and Sehun choked, his fingers digging into the bedsheets. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Pressing a kiss to the ridge of Sehun’s shoulderblade, he murmured, “What do you think? Are you ready?”

“You’re gonna fucking kill me, man,” Sehun gasped. “Yes, yes, fucking hurry _up._ ”

“Bossy little shit,” Chanyeol said fondly, but his hand disappeared, and Sehun looked back over his shoulder to watch as he tore open the condom wrapper and stretched the condom down over his cock. And Sehun knew he was in too deep, because there was nothing sexy about putting a raincoat on a trouser snake but somehow - _somehow_ \- Chanyeol made it hot as fuck. Something about his broad palm and long fingers, something about his size, how very hard he was, the way he slid the latex on and settled it in place, forced Sehun to moan helplessly and drop his head back down, his eyes squeezing shut.

Big hands landed on Sehun’s hips, and the bed dipped as Chanyeol climbed up and settled on his knees behind Sehun. Warm lips pressed down once, twice, three times, in a line down Sehun’s spine, ending with a slow, wet kiss to the small of Sehun’s back. Sehun arched, and Chanyeol hummed his appreciation, and then there was something pressing against Sehun’s ass, rubbing gently against him for a moment before lining up.

Chanyeol pushed, and Sehun gasped in shocked pleasure as he was breached. Another kiss, this time between his shoulderblades, then Sehun was opened, slowly and relentlessly, by Chanyeol pressing gently but steadily forward. He keened softly into the bedsheets, the breath pushed out of him in a whine, like coffee grounds in a French press.

“Okay?” Chanyeol rumbled, sounding as breathless as Sehun felt. Sehun nodded, not trusting his voice. Chanyeol was _big_ and the feeling of being filled up was all but overwhelming. “You feel amazing,” Chanyeol whispered, and Sehun huffed out a laugh, pushing back a little.

The older man responded by pushing in the rest of the way, until his hipbones connected with Sehun’s ass, and then, impossibly, _deeper_ , his fingers curling around Sehun’s hips to pull him back further and further until he could literally go no more. Completely impaled, Sehun whined and squirmed and fisted his hands in the sheets.

“Oh God,” he panted, feeling his insides flutter helplessly. 

“I told you to call me Chanyeol.”

Overstimulated as he was, it took a moment for Sehun to register the quip. He reached back with one arm and flailed until his fingers connected with flesh; Chanyeol’s laughter shook his entire body from the inside out.

Annoyed at being teased, Sehun fought back with a sharp swivel of his hips, grinding back onto Chanyeol’s cock. Choking on his own breath, Chanyeol collapsed forward, his forehead pressed between Sehun’s shoulderblades. “Shit,” he breathed out, warming Sehun’s skin.

Sehun spread his thighs further and arched as best he could. “Come on,” he whined.

And finally, _finally_ , Chanyeol started to thrust. Long, powerful strokes that took full advantage of the length and size of his cock, fast enough for satisfying friction but slow enough that Sehun could feel every centimeter, over and over, harder and harder. Sehun met each thrust with all the leverage he had, rocking his hips in time as pleasure lanced through him. 

“Gorgeous,” Chanyeol gasped roughly. “So fucking _gorgeous_ , Sehun, I - ” Whatever the end of the sentence was meant to be, it was lost in a deep bass moan, loud enough that Sehun felt his sternum vibrate. One hand smoothed down Sehun’s side, from his ribs over the side of his waist, sliding over his hip before cupping one asscheek and squeezing roughly. The strength of his hand made Sehun’s knees weak; it was a good thing he wasn’t really using them at the moment. “How much do you...Can I...fuck, I need to fucking…” Another moan, impossibly _deeper_.

“Incoherent already?” Sehun panted, turning his head in an attempt to look back over his shoulder. In the position he was in, he couldn’t see much, but the view of Chanyeol’s muscled right shoulder was a reward in itself. “Thought you were gonna - _ahhh_ \- drag it out for hours.” 

Another kiss to his back, the gentleness of it totally belying the strength of his thrusts. “Want to fuck you so hard,” Chanyeol admitted softly. “Want to rip you open. Can I…?”

The shiver began at Sehun’s hairline and raced down his spine, tightening his belly and curling his toes. “ _Yes,_ ” he hissed, pushing back and clamping down, purposely squeezing Chanyeol’s cock with all his might.

Chanyeol’s response was vocal, wordless, overwhelmed and _loud_. Heat left Sehun’s back as he sat up, his hands adjusting their grip on Sehun’s hips, and Sehun braced himself just in time.

The first thrust slammed into his body, overpowering the clench of his internal muscles and splitting him apart. It knocked his breath out in a whoosh and Sehun barely had time to inhale before the next thrust. True to his word, Chanyeol came at him like a jackhammer, hard and deep and _fast_. 

In five quick thrusts, pleasure roared over Sehun’s body like a threatening tsunami; in five more it crashed down over him and washed away all of his sense and a good chunk of his bodily control. He was vaguely aware that he was making noise, a single long moan broken up into _ah-ah-ah_ by the beat of Chanyeol’s hips against his ass, vaguely aware of his arms clawing desperately at the sheets and the monumental effort it took to stop his legs from doing the same. Chanyeol’s pleasured moans were a deep counterpoint to his own, and they sounded like they were coming through gritted teeth; in a momentary flash of lucidity Sehun wished he was face-up so he could see Chanyeol’s face twist up in need.

One particularly fierce thrust pushed Sehun far enough forward that his knees slipped out from under him, forcing him flat on his stomach. Chanyeol overbalanced and fell forward, barely catching his upper body with one hand. His weight pressed Sehun’s leaking, oversensitive cock into the sheets, and Sehun gasped and jerked.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Chanyeol spit out, his voice right behind Sehun’s ear. A second’s rearranging, and then Chanyeol’s lean thighs pressed Sehun’s together, laid out along the outsides. Lips pressed to the back of Sehun’s shoulder and Chanyeol resumed thrusting.

With his thighs pressed together, Chanyeol had to use more force to get deep, slamming roughly into Sehun’s ass, his hips slapping against Sehun’s buttcheeks. But it was a tighter fit, a _lot_ tighter, and when Sehun instinctively arched his back to lift his hips as high as they could go, suddenly Chanyeol’s cock hit him in exactly the right spot and Sehun _screamed_ into the mattress.

Growling possessively, Chanyeol resumed his bruising pace, fucking Sehun like his life depended on it. Heaving out sobbing, broken breaths, Sehun scrabbled helplessly against the bedsheets, until his fingers met the cool, slick material of the mattress top. He opened his eyes to see that he’d pulled the sheets completely off the bed, balled up haphazardly under his cheek.

“Sehun,” Chanyeol gasped against the back of his neck. The broken need in his tone nearly made Sehun come all on its own, his trapped cock pulsing against his stomach. Chanyeol’s arms gave out, and his upper body pressed down onto Sehun’s back. The added weight upped the friction of the mattress on his cock that much more, and Sehun whined needily.

“I’m close,” he gasped. “I’m so - fuck - _Chanyeol._ ” Chanyeol’s hands found his and covered them, his fingers slipping between Sehun’s, partway between holding him down and just plain holding him. Sehun wrapped his fingers around Chanyeol’s and held on as Chanyeol’s thrusting got shallower, faster, more erratic.

“I want you to come,” Chanyeol growled in his ear. “Come on, babe, I need to feel it. Your ass is so amazing, I wanna feel you squeeze me, I wanna see you writhe.” He snarled, his thrusts redoubling. “ _Come for me._ ” 

The dirty, dark tone of his voice snaked down Sehun’s spine, fished out a sobbing moan from deep within his gut and dragged it from Sehun’s slack, breathless mouth. Chanyeol shoved himself as deep as he could manage and held it, grinding down hard, his cock pressed directly into Sehun’s prostate and his weight forcing Sehun’s cock into the mattress, and that was it, Sehun was done. With a pathetically broken cry, Sehun erupted, soaking the sheets and his own skin. 

The moment he started coming and his insides started twitching and fluttering, Chanyeol _snarled_ and started thrusting wildly, the grip of his hands tightening more and more until Sehun was sure his bones were going to crack. Still shaking and shuddering from the force of his own orgasm, Sehun weakly pushed back and rode it out, until Chanyeol sucked in a noisy breath and came himself. Sensitive as he was, the heavy pulse of Chanyeol’s cock inside of him took Sehun’s breath away.

Finally, Chanyeol stilled, his body going lax, dead weight on Sehun’s back. His grip loosened, but he didn’t pull his hands away, so Sehun didn’t let go, dropping his cheek to the mussed sheets. For several long moments, both just laid out flat and breathed.

Eventually, Chanyeol pulled his elbows under himself, lifting part of his weight off of Sehun’s back. He started pressing his lips all over Sehun’s shoulders, lazy, gentle kisses that made Sehun’s spine shiver in a different way.

“Mmm,” Sehun groaned appreciatively, pushing his arms out in front of him to open his shoulderblades and stretch out his skin to give Chanyeol as much access as possible. “I have a great idea,” he mumbled. “Let’s do that like a billion times.”

A deep, but slightly out-of-breath chuckle. “As much as you want,” Chanyeol murmured into his skin. “Any time you want.” 

Sehun glanced over his shoulder. Chanyeol was flushed and sweating, the emotion on his face open and raw. Giddiness seeped into Sehun’s overworked system, and he smiled helplessly.

Chanyeol leaned down and kissed him. The angle was awkward, but the kiss was sweet and slow, a statement and a promise. When they broke apart, Sehun pressed his forehead to Chanyeol’s jaw, and they both breathed for a moment.

“Nnng,” Chanyeol grunted finally. “Um. Garbage can?”

What? Oh, the condom, right. Sehun pointed, and Chanyeol carefully pulled out and sat back. Sehun collapsed onto his side, watching lazily as Chanyeol tied off the rubber and tossed it away. Moments later Chanyeol collapsed beside him, long arms wrapping around him and tugging him up onto his body. Laughing, Sehun let himself be arranged, until he was half on Chanyeol’s chest and their legs were tangled.

“Ugh, that was perfect,” Chanyeol muttered. “Good night.” He closed his eyes, and Sehun laughed again and slapped his shoulder playfully.

“It’s hardly even nine PM,” he pointed out. 

“You wore me out,” Chanyeol complained. But his eyes opened again, and he looked down at Sehun, and the affection in his gaze made Sehun warm despite his nudity. “If we’re not passing out, what do you want to do?”

Hmm. “Watch a movie?” Sehun suggested. 

Chanyeol’s smile widened. “Sounds perfect,” he mumbled. “Just let me...just for a minute?” His arms tightened, and, oh.

Cute.

“Sure,” Sehun agreed, and settled in for a nice long snuggle.


End file.
